Star Amongst the Clouds
by Luster Shady
Summary: The after-life was a funny place, all rain and no sunshine. Hoshi had truly thought his misery had finally ended, until he saw a flash of blue hair in the relentless rain. And then reality -what he had once called fiction from behind a screen- struck. From one war to another, he just couldn't catch a break, could he? /WarOrphans-centric. /OC
1. Landing

_A/N: Hello, this my first serious Naruto fanfic. It will centre mostly around the Ame Orphans Trio and the subsequent birth of Akatsuki, in an AU where the organization does not lose it's way and expand upon their characters. But you can tell that by the fact a (Semi-SI) OC is in place. This was meant to be a prologue, but I wanted to gather them all in one chapter. Read and enjoy. Follow/Fav/Review to motivate the author._

* * *

 _Purgatory is a funny place_.

The boy sat at the edge of a small cave, barely fitting in by assuming the foetal position. The world outside seemed to be nothing but mountains and rain. Rubbing his hands beneath his dark blue cloak for the umpteenth time, he retreated further into himself and blew against the cloth covering his mouth for ephemeral warmth.

 _Seriously, I thought hell was supposed to be hot_. Unless humans had been mistaken about the after-life entirely and it was heaven that was hot. He bristled as the wind tore through his thin garment; more of a rag he had picked up before breaking for shelter. And he was still confused at how his body seemed to have reverted back to a child's from a teenager's.

"Damn it, do I have to die _again_?" He asked himself, looking out into storm. He had drifted between sleep and consciousness more times than he could count by now. Each time he awoke weaker than before, more weary and stiff. Was this supposed to go on until he was freed of sins? Shit, he'd done a lot of those. Couldn't he get some sort of clemency? He _had_ been good to cats.

After was seemed like days after his arrival to this desolate land, the boy spotted the first sight of something alive. Another child with blue hair, in a faded maroon shirt which cut off beneath the sleeves to black and dull blue skirt reaching her ankles.

 _I'm not alone!_ He stirred, rushing out into the drizzle and nearly forgetting he had been still for hours on end. Not even managing a step, he hit his head against the exit of the cave and almost fell face first into a puddle. He gazed at his reflection for a second, before exclaiming.

"What?!" White hair slicked down by the rain instead of his dark brown locks, skin slightly paler than his tan and eyes so black he couldn't see his pupil in place of his brown irises. His nose was smaller, and his jaw curved enough that even without the baby fat, would not belie the shape he remembered having.

 _Forget where I am, who I am seems more important._ But then the frigid air reminded him why he had left the relative safety of his cave in the first place and made for the figure retreating further and further away from him.

"Wait!" He yelled, following on trembling limbs and wrapping his cloak around him tighter. What wouldn't he give to just have some boxers on his person, but apparently since you're born naked, you die and then wake up alive naked.

The blue-haired person craned his or her neck back to look– _maybe if they've got dye they have more clothes-_ but didn't stop.

"I said wait please!" He tried the magic word, bare feet so frigid his toes began to burn.

" _Leave me alone!_ " The girl (he could tell by the voice) yelled back and the boy nearly tripped over a rock. Of all the languages to speak in the after-life, why did it she have to use Japanese? They didn't even have a religious book for that as far as his knowledge went. At least he was verbally fluent, never mind the Kanji, for it had been among the one of the languages he knew.

"Sorry for scaring you! Please hold up!" He switched languages to no effect, except causing her to increase the distance between them. "At least lend me some underwear or shoes!" He yelled at the top of his lungs.

The blue-haired kid finally stopped and looked at him in what presumed to be a deer-in-the-headlights look. The boy made his way towards her, slowing down and carefully raising both hands in peace.

"I-I don't have anything!" She hiccupped, and as the boy stepped ever so slowly towards her, rocks biting the skin beneath his feet. Her eyes were red and she seemed to be trembling from something other than the cold. "I'm sorry, stop following me."

The boy paused, drops of the rain still pelting the both of them. Calm, thoughtful black eyes met frightened amber ones. She looked like a scared kitten.

 _Oh no brain, you know what happens when we start thinking of things in terms of cats._

"I don't have anything either. You don't want to see beneath this cloak." The boy sniffed, feeling a cold coming on. "But my name is Hoshi. How did you get here?"

He expected some sort of answer, not for her to turn tail and start running again. Cursing internally, he followed. The girl did not look back, charging ahead before another piece of uncertain terrain cause her to stumble.

"No!" She squeaked, about to fall on a rock big with an edge that could easily split her forehead open. A hand latched onto her shoulder and quickly pulled her back. Just as she turned to look at Hoshi, another gust of wind blew and her gaze, already reluctant to look at the face of saviour she had just shunned, saw something that made her want to scream. There was only so much Hoshi could do with one hand gripping her and the other holding his cloak from being blown off his shoulders.

"Let us just find someplace safe first." Hoshi muttered, face so hot he could swear the rain was evaporating as soon as it hit.

"Konan," The girl said. "My name is Konan."

Hoshi nodded at the oddly familiar name, before wrapping his cloak securely around himself. The both set off at a more sedate pace to avoid any mishaps before reaching a small building. In the distance Hoshi could spot some buildings, but put any questions in the back of his mind.

There was no door, just a dirty, green curtain covering the entrance of what seemed like a guard post from the inside, completely bare except for some flattened cardboard boxes. There was a hole in the roof and drops of water slid down on all walls but there was a small spot for sitting that was dry.

It was a portrait of destitution if he'd ever seen one.

"You live here?" Hoshi hoped to be wrong and she shook her head to his relief. He surveyed it once more. There was nothing of comfort that showed someone ever lived here. But she had dyed her hair not too long ago, Hoshi judged, seeing that was blue all the way to the roots.

"Since mom and dad are here anymore, I can't live in the city. I promised them I would run away if there was danger."

"What danger?" Hoshi inquired. Could you still die after dying?

"W-w-what danger? The shinobi! They kill everyone! And anyone else who is hungry will beat you up and steal from you! And mom said I had to be extra careful since I'm a girl."

Hoshi blinked. Placed his hand on his forehead and slowly dragged it over his face. Had he died and gone back in time? Her clothing style and materials this building was made of didn't fit that thought if _shinobi_ were around.

"Why would the shinobi kill everyone?"

"...Are you stupid? We're in a war!" Konan hissed, genuinely angry. Hoshi adjusted his cloak and went into thought as her eyes began to water.

 _Shinobi kill everyone. War. Parents not present anymore. She could be an orphan, most likely? This is too weird._

"Sorry, I needed a moment to gather my thoughts. Where are we?"

"The Village Hidden by the Rain." Konan replied quietly. Hoshi couldn't help but gape. Which otaku had been lying to her? Looking closely, Konan did resemble the one from Akatsuki...

"And it's ruled over by some idiot called Hanzo?" Hoshi sneezed. Instead of saying 'Bless you', Konan looked at him in horror.

"Did you just call him an idiot?" ...And whoever taught her to fear an anime character as Voldemort ought to be struck with a baseball bat every twenty fours at random for the rest of their lives so they could live in the same irrational fear.

"Yeah, he's from a manga anyway."

"What's a manga?"

"It's fiction. A made-up story, with made-up people or characters, which are then drawn onto paper, all in order to tell a story." Explaining that turned out to be a bad idea because Konan burst into tears.

" _He's real_! And his ninja do horrible things to people who are not ninjas and we're _always_ running and there's _never_ any food and t-they- _THEY KILLED MOM AND DAD YESTERDAY!_ " She dropped to her knees, clamping her hands around her mouths to muffle her wails as tears poured from her eyes.

And before he knew it he was next to her, arms around her and rubbing slow circles on her back because _damn it_ , no child deserved to be broken over wars fought by adults.

"Shh. It's okay if it hurts. It's okay to cry." And she pressed her face into his soaked shoulder, trembling. "I'm sorry I said those things."

After several minutes of sobbing, the first thing Konan said upon calming down was, "We should move. If anyone heard us they will come after us." Which deepened Hoshi's frown but he nodded and complied, loathe as he was to abandon the shelter. As they moved away from the buildings in the distance, Hoshi following Konan who seemed to know where to go, they came across a clearing that was no different from the rest of the landscape except for the carnage on the site.

Hoshi gasped, and Konan covered her mouth.

Ninjas in uniform were dead before him, the smell of blood and petrichor mixing to create a disorienting sensation that numbed his brain. Blood froze in his veins as he tried to say something, anything but literal cold, hard proof was laid before him.

Clothing too real to be a self-made cosplay, real weapons, signs of burns and unusual amounts of water along with unnatural alterations to the ground like the results of various jutsu in the animes.

"Believe me now?" Konan's voice snapped him out of his reverie and Hoshi nodded, his throat still too constricted to speak.

 _I'm not in the after-life, am I?_ Dead men and women were lying on the ground in front of him. No one could have been bothered closing their eyes, or covering those horrific expressions. Was this how he would have looked like if he was dead? Hoshi shuddered, but not from the rain.

Grey uniforms with strange mouthpieces on them, more suited for diving beneath the water, and wearing forehead protectors with four vertical lines, the symbol of the Hidden Rain. The other side of the battle had dark blue uniforms with the symbol of a Leaf on their forehead protectors.

"What are we looking for?" He asked weakly, feeling the bile rise to his throat.

"It's a very rare chance!" Konan gestured to the pouches of the corpses and then pulled on one's shirt, before pointing towards Hoshi's cloak, as she continued to rummage through the field. Taking the hint, Hoshi swallowed before doing the same.

In the end he ended up stealing clothes from a dead boy who seemed to be fourteen or fifteen, two years younger than Hoshi remembered being in the life before- he had died, he was as sure of that as the bodies before him- even though the sleeves covered his hands and he had to roll up the ends of the pants of the grey uniform.

He stole ninja sandals he'd often thought of as weird from a woman in a black uniform and greyish-purple vest, Konoha's uniform during the Second Shinobi War. The cloak he was wearing before now functioned as a sack to store whatever he could scavenge from the battle field.

He'd only managed to grab canteen of water and a pack of ration bars before steps approached him hurriedly, Konan looking at him once and him getting up to follow without question, picking up a kunai off the ground. They had been there for barely ten minutes.

"We can't be here too long." She said, remembering her parent's advice. Hoshi didn't need to be told twice. They ran away from the way they came, heading for the towers in the distance. The grey Ame-nin uniform he'd stolen was thick and prevented the water from seeping back in, so at least that was an upgrade.

Hoshi remained deep in thought, confusion raging inside his head but survival instincts kicking in. Of all the places to end up in the Naruto Universe, he ended up in Ame? Two pairs of black sandals pattered against puddles before Konan slipped into a narrow alley between two strange towers.

Hoshi shivered, settling under small rafters. He laid his cloak-turned-sack on the drier pavement. Konan had only been carrying a canteen of water. She looked longingly at Hoshi's findings, resembling a small animal even more.

"C-Can I have the papers after you're done with them?" The two ration bars were wrapped in smooth, yellow paper. Her tone caused his chest to tighten.

"Here." Hoshi held out a bar despite being hungry enough to eat half a dozen of them. Konan took it with hesitance, unwrapped the bar delicately to retrieve the paper without a trace of damage. She then held out the grey ration bar back to him.

"What." Hoshi glared, before his eyes softened. She didn't know better than to assume he was selfish like others she had probably met. "That's for you."

"But...are you sure?" The way she looked at him showed just how much kindness she had received in her life. Hoshi nodded, waving the other ration bar in his hand.

"This is mine, but you can also keep the paper from this." _You deserve_ so _much more. I'm sorry._

"...Thank you, Hoshi-san."

"You don't have to use '-san' with me, Konan-chan." He managed to say. His stomach grumbled and Konan handed him the already unwrapped bar.

"Eat this; I'll keep the other one...Hoshi-kun." It was a start. He took a bite and chewed slowly. The texture grainy and hard because of how cold it was, but it didn't taste so bland or bad, with a faint hint of apples.

"Chew slowly. If you eat slowly you won't feel so hungry later." Konan advised, sitting down. He nodded and plopped down next to her.

The finished their meal in complete silence, although Hoshi saved half of his bar. Konan uncapped the canteen and offered it to Hoshi, who flinched when he took a sip. The cold water stabbed his throat before going down.

"If we had ninjutsu we could have warmed it." Konan hugged her knees, looking wistful.

"Don't worry, small sips will be fine." _At least for my core temperature, that is._ He'd be lucky to catch only a cough and flu from it. "Is this how you have been getting food?"

"It is how everyone on the streets does it. We ran into that...place by coincidence. Dad told me once that shinobi have more food on one of them than a family has in Ame." She smoothed out the paper from the ration bars and began to fold it.

Hoshi watched intently, careful not to sneeze in her general direction and before long Konan turned to show him a paper crane in her hands.

"Here, this is ori, ori..." She fumbled.

"Origami. It's very nice." Hoshi whispered back. "Can you make something else, Konan-chan?" She nodded, before taking her time to fold the other paper into a rose.

"Hey, you're very talented." Hoshi took examined the rose, before placing it next to her ear. "So, what do we do now?"

"I don't know." The both looked out into the rain, knowing it was not going to stop. "Hoshi-kun, why were you so weird when I met you?" Konan asked.

"I died, and wondered if this was the after-life." Hoshi rubbed his hands.

"Died? But you're here." She cocked her head, blue bangs dripping off her forehead.

"It's a long story." He sighed. Hoshi wasn't even his name, given the fact he had not been Japanese. Then again, he didn't even look like himself. "I never expected to end up here of all places."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a bad person and was expecting some place hotter." He _had_ died; there was no doubt about that. And he had expected hell.

Another tense silence followed, punctuated by Hoshi blowing his nose.

"You're not a bad person." Konan piped up. "No one gives food to anyone here."

"I'm from some place far away, where it is common sense to share even if you starve by yourself." Hoshi sighed. "And I don't know how I got here, so please don't ask."

Before Konan could speak further, the sound of someone sobbing reached their ears and they almost jumped out of their skins. Hoshi tightened his fingers around the kunai he had picked up.

"Should we check?" He asked, but Konan did not give any answer. The childish sobbing continued. There came a sound of someone falling in a puddle and it intensified.

"I don't know." Konan looked out the alley, the sound coming from around the corner of the wall they were leaning against.

 _You know, that almost sounds like a kitten mewling._ Hoshi thought, before resisting the urge to facepalm. _What did I say about thinking things in terms of cats?_

"I'll go check it out. Stay here, unless something happens." Hoshi said before creeping on his toes and slowly making his way towards the sound. As he rounded the corner, his eyes fell upon a child in a black yukata with white trimmings, sopping red hair covering his eyes and continuously shaking.

 _Nagato._

"Hey, get up." He placed a hand on his shoulder. Nagato looked up, hair still covering his eyes. "Come on, you can cry later, move for now." The redhead nodded, allowing Hoshi to take his hand and lead him back to Konan.

"Hey, I found someone." Hoshi said as Konan scuttled a bit to offer them space. They fit under the cover, if barely.

"I'm Hoshi, and this is..." He trailed off, gesturing to the blue-haired girl.

"Konan." Said she and the redhead nodded, ceasing his sobs.

"N-Nagato."

"Nagato-kun, are you hungry?" Hoshi inquired and Nagato nodded. Hoshi took out his half-eaten ration bar and held it to him. "It's all we have left, but you can have it." He'd been saving it for Konan since there no idea where the next meal was coming from but, as usual, life didn't go as planned.

Nagato stared at the item, mouth open in disbelief. Hoshi took that moment to push it against his lips, feeling like he wasn't going to take it by himself anytime soon.

"Just eat. We've had our fill." He ordered, running his hand through his white hair (that was soaked again). Nagato complied, chewing the bar with such fervor that it got stuck in his throat. Konan immediately gave him water as Hoshi moved to thump the boy's back.

"T-Thank you." Nagato murmured, looking at his feet. Hoshi sat back, thinking hard. He was technically the oldest of them, which meant he must take care of them.

"Konan, where are we?" He asked.

"At a corner of the village. It's…safer than the inside." Konan replied.

"But there are people living inside?" If Konan thought that finding field full of dead people was lucky, well, he had a bone or two to pick with this village. And this world, knowing what could be achieved on an individual level. He stared at the sky, flexing his hands

"Yes but…they're shinobi there as well." Konan mumbled.

Light was fading from the sky, indicating the arrival of the night. Hoshi inhaled slowly, viewing his kunai as he held it in an ironclad grip.

What had been a reason for why died feeling so helpless; he could do it in this world. Hoshi had the chance to _protect_ himself and those around him _._ It wasn't only the children in this world that had known wars, after all.

But such a time was not now. Not yet. And so the children stayed still under their fragile cover, away from the battles waged outside and the crimes that took place inside, drifting to uneven sleep with the occasional breeze rattling their bones.

Slightly unsure, Hoshi spread his arms and pulled them closer to his dry frame slowly, before they did his work for him and snuggled against the warmth provided him.

 _Like kittens against a cat, nestling against her fur like the cutest thing in the world_. The white-haired boy knew he was defeated when he thought that thought, and sighed. Praying silently for them to survive, he closed his eyes as well.

* * *

 _One month later:_

A month had gone by in what felt like a year. During that time Hoshi imparted whatever knowledge he knew about survival against the cold to his two charges, as he began to think of them. He wouldn't even be a legal adult in his previous world, yet here he was, just a few years short of being deemed mature enough to send out to a battlefield.

Surviving sure made it hard to keep track of time, but at least Nagato wasn't completely neglectful of what went around him even if he cried. A lot. Hoshi was sure there were babies out there who moped less than he did, but as annoying as it seemed to be it was also somewhat endearing.

Currently they were hiding surrounded by cargo boxes. Hoshi had taken the opportunity to build a ring of bricks between which he was placing the driest wooden planks he could find among the boxes.

"What are you doing, Hoshi-san?" Nagato asked as he handed another small stick to Hoshi, who was assembling them within the small brick enclosure.

"Trying to make a fire." Hoshi answered, dragging up the collar of his shirt and blowing in it to warm his mouth.

"A f-f-fire? _How_?" Konan managed to overhear as she returned from her task of finding dry material. She ended up bringing a collapsed cardboard box, careful to not drop it on any wet spot on the floor. The building was damp enough that green algae infested numerous nooks and crannies.

"Magic." Hoshi smirked a bit, enjoying their starry-eyed look before getting to work. Using the kunai he'd be taking extra care of (and occasionally using it to threaten people into handing over half of what edibles they had by posing as a ninja) he began to cut into the wood, exposing dry splinters.

Then he chipped away at the stick which had sparked the idea – pardon the pun- in the first place, ridding it of wet bark and placing it perpendicular to the plank, driving it in before rubbing it between his hands as fast as he could to generate friction.

"Finally." Hoshi blew softly on the sparks as a small fire started after two hours. He stretched his fingers, still paying attention the flame. Three times it had winked out, but this time it looked like it would stay.

For their part, Konan and Nagato had watched with rapt attention despite how much he had failed along the way. Transfixed by the growing flame, they huddled around it.

"Thank you, Hoshi-kun." Konan spoke quietly. Nagato sniffled, before hurriedly wiping his eyes. "Thank you very much."

"You don't have to thank me so much." Hoshi gave a wry smile. "I just wish I could do more for you."

* * *

 _Two weeks later_ :

"You fucking brat!" The ninja yelled, kicking Hoshi hard enough that he went flying. There was definitely a foot-shaped bruise on his chest. "Say that again."

The teenager was at least a foot taller than Hoshi, wore a vertically striped seaweed-colored shirt and black trousers. His dirty blonde hair was pushed back by a headpiece that also had a metal plate with Ame's symbol, and seemed attached to the breathing mask on his face.

Hoshi tried to get up but the ninja pushed him down again, stomping on him. Today was not his day, asking a ninja politely for some morsel was a mistake. A ninja he was mentally calling Mr. Bumble. He wasn't exactly Oliver Twist, but then again Bumble didn't know how to wield a kunai.

Konan and Nagato hadn't eaten for three days and were crying when he left them. Even if Hoshi couldn't get them something to eat, at least he ought to be able to go back to them.

"I-I'm sorry shinobi-sama." He croaked, deciding to go for some bullshit groveling. He hadn't revealed his kunai yet, which was hidden in his sleeve and tied securely to his wrist with a strip of cloth.

"Please forgive me." He continued, for he didn't have the reflexes to go for a successful strike. Rather he himself lives than the try so the other boy died.

His act was cut short by a stone sailing past the Ame-nin's head. The aim had been good, but the blonde rolled his eyes as he shifted so that the rock missed by a few inches.

Hoshi turned to try and look at the new arrival but the foot moved from his chest and stomped on his throat, making the white-haired boy see stars and hack up blood.

"Hey, get lost!" The newcomer yelled and Hoshi caught a flash of orange hair with a beige shirt. _So the last one finally shows up, huh?_ He thought.

Yahiko strode forward, brown eyes burning with anger. "If you have that much time to pick on someone weaker than you, why don't you go kill some shitty ninja from some other village?"

"Heh. Aren't you a fucking philosopher?" The ninja turned to him, clearly mocking. His tone incensed Yahiko, who drew his hands from the pockets of his brown pants, and hefting two more rocks as he charged at the masked teen.

The ninja snorted as he shifted to deal with Yahiko, dodging the first rock gracefully and as he maneuvered around the second he felt the pitiful kid from beneath him punch his thigh, but the pain that followed intensified greatly.

And Yahiko stopped short at the sight of the boy, whom both of them had dismissed from the fight driving a kunai into the leg that held him down.

Hoshi jerked his weapon out and the wound sprouted blood before it began to fall on his own grey shirt. Had he not instinctively cover his face the incoming foot would have broken his nose.

"You little shit! You're fucking with the wrong-" Another stone cut him short and he turned to Yahiko. "And _you_ , just you wait-" The ninja, who by now seemed to be a genin at most was interrupted again by Hoshi driving his kunai through his Achilles tendon through the part of his heel exposed by his black ninja sandal.

As the ninja toppled, unable to place any weight on Hoshi further, the boy crawled out from beneath his, pulling at his kunai and catching it in his hand again. Yahiko took the opportunity to make a grab from him run, leaving a cursing and bleeding teenager in their wake.

After ten minutes of going over, under and many sides of streets they reached a place with no people. Both sides of the street were open and another escape was present through an alley in front of them.

Hoshi looked around and from the signs on the empty stores and destroyed furniture laid out in front of them deduced that it used to be some collection of food shops.

"Thank you." He said to Yahiko, rubbing his throat. The other boy smiled brightly, even if they were breathing with hands on their knees.

"It was nothing. And hey, you were awesome as hell! Where did you get that kunai from?" Yahiko fired off rapidly.

"Long story." Hoshi replied. "Know any place I can get food? You don't look good enough from me to steal from."

Yahiko gave the other boy a long look, like he'd grown another head, before backing away a bit warily.

"Why am I not good enough?"

"First of all, I steal out of necessity; I'm not trash. And second of all, my friends haven't had a meal in days and I'm desperate. I'd kill a rat if I could find one." Though they were probably present in sewers and would leave them dead from all the bacteria they carried.

Yahiko pondered over this information, before nodding. Hoshi held up his hands in a gesture of peace as he took a step forward.

"I know a way to get something to eat now that there are two of us. You in?" He held out his hand.

"I'm in. My name is Hoshi." Hoshi received it and they both shook.

"I'm Yahiko. There are streams of water that run to a lake below the village. We might catch some fish in them." Yahiko revealed. "But the water flows really fast and the lake itself is taken over by the ninjas."

"Don't tell me you think we can spear them on a kunai in a stream in the rain." Hoshi tried to say as a joke but smacked his palm against his forehead when Yahiko gave a sheepish smile.

"Hey, that's just one idea. I've seen people kick fish out of streams!"

"Were those people also walking on water?"

"Well…" Yahiko quieted down and they trudged in silence. "We'll figure something out."

After quite a lot of thinking and scavenging, they managed to find a ruined table-cloth among trash. There was no shortage of water to wash it at the stream, though it froze the digits of their hands.

The two of them waded between knee-high water and held the cloth between them, nearly four feet wide, a few inches above the surface of the water and the rest below, their hands holding each corner.

"One, two, three!" On Yahiko's call they lifted it up, bringing the ends together and catching nothing on the first try. Fortune seemed to smile on them and as the next try they managed to make a catch.

Many were small, silver fishes no longer than their fingers, but one foot long specimen thrashed violently and was immediately impaled by Hoshi, his kunai going straight through its body. Yahiko cheered.

"Let's drop this on the bank first. Then we can come back for more- ACHOO!" Yahiko hastily rubbed his nose. They scampered out of the water, legs nearly frozen. The reality of the situation soon hit Hoshi.

"We'll lose our feet if we stay here any longer. Follow me." As he spoke he weeded out the small fishes, throwing them back in the stream until he was left with just three, one of which was their great catch and other two as big as his hand.

Hoshi nearly dropped their haul when Yahiko was about to step on something that glinted near the ground. Grabbing the orange-haired kid roughly, the older (at least mentally) of the two pulled him back and pointed to the trap. Now aware, they spoke not a single word and did their best to get the hell out of there.

* * *

Hoshi led the way back, chastising Yahiko to not look paranoid around people unless that itself attracts someone they didn't want to run into. They reached the warehouse, and after climbing on a barrel placed below a narrow window they squeezed in, Hoshi wincing from his injuries.

Holding up a hand to stop Yahiko, Hoshi rapped his knuckles against a cargo box in their secret pattern. The response came soon in the form of another pattern.

"It's clear." Hoshi turned to his stunned partner before leading him to his other two friends. Yahiko was surprised at the sight of the blue-haired girl and red-haired boy, both of them failing to hold in their tears, huddled next to a fire.

"Konan-chan, Nagato-kun." Hoshi called gently, "Sorry I took so long. This is Yahiko. We caught fish!"

Konan looked up and gave up a watery smile. Nagato intensified his sobbing.

"Hey, don't cry! You're a man!" Yahiko began to scold him as Hoshi sat near the flame. There was warmth, they finally had a decent meal, and the trio was together.

 _Truly, the start of a beautiful friendship._ Hoshi thought to himself, smiling wryly. Come to think of it, the first time he was seeing them smile was now eating slightly burnt saltwater fish that only had its own seasoning, chatting with each other.

Maybe he'd finally done something right. And with his knowledge of the coming future before him, he still had things to do.


	2. Albedo

Thank you for the follows! This chapter involves contact with the Sannin, after which there is no canon documentation of how the story for our cast goes. Enjoy.

* * *

Around half a year later, the novelty of living with anime characters had completely worn off. Hoshi found the only thing that could rival how much Nagato cried was how much Yahiko preached about becoming powerful enough to end the war and crush countries.

Impressionable children that they were, they soon began to share this dream. The way Konan and Nagato agreed reminded Hoshi that their achievements had not come from simply following Yahiko; they would all be S-Rank in the future.

They everything they could to live; cheat, lie, extort at kunai-point. Hoshi found it funny how his second chance at childhood was very much like his first, albeit the climate was much colder and wet, so he ruled out dying of thirst as one of his top three causes of death.

The worked in groups of two, Hoshi often with Nagato, and Konan with Yahiko, but when the circumstances worsened (as often as they did) they all split to cover more area to search for food.

Wandering alone allowed Hoshi to gather what information he could about the village, often by having to surrender his some of his scraps to people as payment. Food was worth its weight in gold, and he wisely kept quiet about his activities to the other three.

From what Hoshi gathered, all the craftsmen and traders the shinobi needed were kept hostage within the village and cheaply provided to keep them contributing towards the war effort. And for all Hanzo ruled the village (at this point the terms seemed ridiculous after he'd seen a few _urban towers)_ , he could not leave ninja in charge of administrative matters, so there was another lot scorned by your average citizen.

And there was a lot of propaganda, no doubt spread by the tactical ruler who could hold his own against three of Konoha's generals, essentially.

 _I can see why they thought Pain was a god._ Hoshi thought once, hearing a baker ramble about how Hanzo was going to ' _deal justice to the vile little thieves_ ' as he held a kunai to his throat while Nagato grabbed a few stale loaves, not going for the best items in the shop.

On other occasions he witnessed men with a forehead-protectors take down a thief, help a few civilians carry their load and exchange small talk over tea and deal politely with strangers, making feel confused. And being confused mean he had made some wrong deductions, or had obtained the wrong information.

"Konan," Hoshi asked as soon as he came back, water dripping off him, "Why do you hate Hanzo?"

"Mom and dad said he was bad guy and when they thought I was asleep mom called him an assho-" she began to supply,

"I get it." Hoshi cut off and went out again the next day. The more he searched, the more he found out that Hanzo was shrouded in mystery, referred to with fear or respect in equal parts.

Once he chanced upon an inebriated old man during the day, who had many a few teeth missing and dishevelled hair. If not for the rain he looked like someone who wouldn't even bothering to bathe regularly. Hoshi pinned him as smart, for he remembered the distinct man enter a shogi place once, dressed in the same beaten black robes and black beard with grey hairs, bushy from lack of shaving.

A little bit of flattery plus the offer of a red jam cookie of the many he had surreptitiously pocketed earlier from a stall with Konan (The girl narrowed her fetching eyes, but knew better to cuss him out on the street while he was doing whatever the hell he did) soon got the old-timer talking.

"Of course the Five Elemental nations wanna take over Ame! Damn Fire wants our engineers, Suna will plunder us to divert these rivers and fish, and Iwa would do well with our rare mineral deposits that don't exist even in the land of Iron! And I don't like Hanzo, really, but he's the best shot we got with those damn shinobi from other villages coming down on us."

Hoshi had the urge to strangle someone when he heard that particular account, but torture would never get him results. Alas, the boy realized he wasn't dealing with a military commander serving as a dictator; he had to take down a full-fledged _politician_.

 _No wonder the man gets along with Danzo of all people_.

* * *

And then there were his own fights, more narrows shaves than Hoshi could count on both hands and countless times all of them returned empty handed, placing rocks on their stomachs and pretending they were full just so they could catch a few hours of sleep.

Yahiko and Hoshi woke up sore from yesterdays' altercation. They had decided to pick the pockets of a well-fed teenager wearing clean and new clothes only to be caught in the act by his friend across the street.

That had led to a fight at the end of which Hoshi sliced opened one's hand and threw his kunai towards the other's chest, the weapon embedding in the boy's fleshy forearm and staining his new clothes instead of piercing his chest.

Barely had they gotten up did Konan rush in, bearing bad news.

"There are people on the street who asked me if I knew two boys with orange and white hair. Whoever you picked on yesterday wants us dead." Konan informed them and they were up and about in minutes, abandoning the hideout they had been using for six months.

Endless rain pelted their face as they ran, Yahiko taking the front and Hoshi at the back, Konan and Nagato between them.

Black eyes scanned their empty surroundings and Hoshi noticed that not one person was around. Just as it was supposed to be towards the outskirts of the village, where battle took place every day, multiple times per day between ninja of various villages.

Konan and Nagato panted loudly, but refused to stop. Hoshi smiled at their effort, feeling sorry for a moment that they had to go through this before focusing on watching their surroundings again.

Only when they finally reached some shelter raised from earth-release jutsu near a barrage did they collapse, leaning against stone pillars.

The entire area fell in the shadow of the mountain that overlooked one of the rivers that ran into Amegakure and drained into the lake Hoshi knew was beneath the city. The ledge they stood on provided a full view of the barrage and its sink.

"Wow!" Yahiko exclaimed and Hoshi had to agree. There was something awe-inspiring about millions of litres of water rushing down a dozen spillways.

 _Always thought where all this continuous rain went,_ Hoshi thought, looking at the answer. Yahiko went further, excitement taking over exhaustion. Hoshi kept an eye on him to see if he stayed a safe distance from the edge before he went off further.

"Uu, I'm even hungrier now." Konan said, clutching her stomach. "Nagato, are you okay?" She asked and the redhead sitting next to her nodded. He wasn't crying, which was an improvement.

The mention of hunger reminded Hoshi of his own twisting intestines and he placed a hand over this belly, trying to will the ache away.

"Hey guys, there are some people eating not too far off. They seem like shinobi." Yahiko returned from wherever he went.

"How many of them are there?" Hoshi asked him, feeling excitement run down his spine.

"Three, two of them are women, but one is a guy. They've all got long hair but his body was really big. Like a real man." Yahiko gestured with his arms spread out.

 _He thinks there are two women?_ Hoshi wondered but didn't say out loud. Well, from a distance Orochimaru could be mistaken for a woman, especially since the sunlight was being filtered by rainclouds and he doubted Yahiko could have gone that far.

"Let's go. If anything, I'll beg them." Hoshi sighed and Yahiko's expression turned sour.

"This war is their damn fault, you know." Yahiko retorted as Konan and Nagato got up, leaning against the pillar for support. Hoshi raised an eyebrow and pretended to clap, not actually letting his hands make contact less the Sannin pick up the sound.

"Your words have satisfied my stomach that has been empty for two days. Let's go." Perhaps it was unfair, but Yahiko needed to know when to carry his pride, and when to simply carry onwards.

"Yeah yeah, fucking smartass," Yahiko retorted as they slowly followed his lead, careful not to make any noise. There was no heat behind the insult, and now was not the time to remind the most vocal of their group to mind his language, so Hoshi let it slide.

 _Ah, the wonders of war on the vocabulary of children._

Soon the shinobi came into view, and as Hoshi ran his gaze over to recognize them indeed as the Sannin, one of them stood up. _Orochimaru_ , Hoshi quickly deduced from the long black hair.

"Hey you, come out already!" And that was Tsunade, sounding very much like her voice-actor. Hoshi turned to Yahiko, who nodded. Signalling the other two to stay back, they emerged from their hiding place.

Two of the three looked surprised to see them, children as they were, while the snake summoner stayed on guard. Yahiko took a deep breath, before ordering with all the authority he could muster, "Give us food!"

"Please." Hoshi inserted much more calmly, making eye contact with all three of them. Having had much experience with beggars and begging in his previous world, he knew it was the best way to guilt trip people. Crying or sobbing tended to put people off and make things awkward, which in turn made just passing by instead of helping an easier option.

As for the rest, up to the people how they rationalize not helping someone in need.

"Where are your parents?" Jiraya asked. And Hoshi abruptly broke eye-contact, letting the action speak for itself.

"They're dead. Will you give us food or not?" Yahiko shot back.

"Here...have some crackers, kid." Jiraya mumbled, holding out his hand with the salty biscuits and wrapper.

"Jiraya?" Tsunade questioned, not liking the slightly vacant expression on his face. He paid no attention towards her.

"Konan-chan, Nagato-kun, you can come out now." The other orphans crept out slowly but then dashed towards the ninja upon seeing the salty biscuits, even nabbing the ones the kunoichi had on her lap to her surprise.

Nagato shared his with Hoshi while Konan went and offered half of hers to Yahiko. They finished the meagre snack whilst standing, never taking their eyes off the adults.

And they trailed behind the Sannin when they left, keeping a distance that would not even fool a genin. When it became apparent that the four would not be deterred, even following them onto a bridge that lead towards the battlefields did the Sannin stopped their steps.

"Would you quit following us? We already gave you what we had!" Tsunade yelled over the roar of water and rain. Taking their pause as an opportunity, the four walked up to them.

"Thank you." Konan placed a folded rose – much better than the ones she had made before- in the palms of the older female.

"You guys are ninja, right? Teach us ninjutsu!" Yahiko piped up again in a way that made Hoshi feel they had brought a knife to a gun fight.

"Don't you guys have anywhere to go?" Jiraya stepped forward. The look on their faces was telling, although Hoshi appeared aloof. The white-haired kid stood out in more ways than just his hair.

"The war makes many orphans and destroys countless homes," Orochimaru had a distant look in his eyes. "These four will die before it's over, from malnutrition if they are not killed first. Just children and so broken, how inhumane...should I?" He looked at the other two.

His teammates shifted uneasily, following his thoughts. As much as Orochimaru rubbed people wrongly, the two knew it was his roundabout way of being bitter about his own personal suffering. The offer that he alone disposes of the orphans was another twisted show of kindness.

"I guess the war breaks the perpetrators as well," Hoshi's high voice came out in a sad, adult-like tone. "If us living until our last breath is 'inhumane' but killing us now is a mercy for you. The only ones who should kill are those who are prepared to die."

And from how Orochimaru was taken aback, Hoshi grasped that he had not turned out to be the evil person he had been written as he had been depicted in the anime.

"If the end result is the same, why would you want to suffer needlessly? Do you think as long as you can keep trying, things will end how you want to?" The snake Sannin glanced at Tsunade from the corner of his eyes before turning to the brat. His teammate's best efforts and hope had not managed to save what she had prized most in the world.

His leaked a small amount of killing intent while trying to rein in his anger, irked by the boy's statement that he wasn't prepared to die. It was a part of him he had hidden so well that even the Sandaime didn't know, but here a total stranger had managed to grasp that with those soulless black eyes... _what_ was he?

Hoshi met Orochimaru's gaze head-on, registering the killing intent without flinching. It was no different than staring down the barrel of a gun, or having a knife pressed against his throat. The Sannin wouldn't kill him, and had plenty of experience with the aforementioned actual killing attempts.

From his side Nagato hiccupped, causing Konan to put an arm around him and Yahiko to glare in annoyance

"That is enough, Orochimaru. Cut it out." Jiraya cut in. "You guys head ahead. I'll take care of them. At least until they can look after themselves." He added to the baffled looks of his teammates, but after a minor protest on Tsunade's part they complied.

"What is your name?" Orochimaru asked one final question.

"Just call me Hoshi, Orochimaru-san." He bit his cheek to prevent any wisecrack from escaping his mouth, such as asking what shampoo he used or that Yahiko had mistaken him for a woman.

"Hoshi...I'll remember your name. Let's go Tsunade." Orochimaru said no more and turned around. He could have killed the kid with a single finger but...not even his Sensei, the Sandaime had managed to see through some of his thoughts like this.

Only when they were a safe distance did Yahiko speak to Hoshi.

"What the fuck was that, Hoshi?"

"Hmm, did you say something?"

"Oh come on-"

"How about we first find some shelter? I'd like a word with you then." Looking at Hoshi, he added, "And if any of you are like him, a long word."

* * *

The small cabin was located in the middle of nowhere, even had a small veranda and was decently was a sink and a paraffin stove, yellow plank walls, a small window and even green tatami around the wooden table and cupboard with had futons stored inside.

After the conditions he had been living in, Hoshi had no words to describe the luxury of a roof over his head with a bath – a _warm_ bath heated up with a fire jutsu- and a change of dry clothes. In the time the four children cleaned themselves and put on matching clothes – green-trimmed black yukatas with a mesh undershirt and boxers – Jiraya's shadow clone returned with a large fish.

Hoshi felt a very queasy feeling in his chest, noticing two identical people in the living room before Jiraya dispelled it. While the other orphans had worn rags, Hoshi still had his durable clothing he had stolen from the Ame-nin, now finally washed with the leftover water from the bath as the others scurried about to help Jiraya with the fish.

"Hoshi-kun, the fish is ready! And look, there are plates for everyone! Come in!" Konan tugged at his sleeves as he hung the uniform on the wire strung across the veranda. He gave a small smile, wondering she got the energy from before following her inside. In no time they were occupying all four sides of a small table and true to her word, there were five plates and pairs of chopsticks set on it. In their midst was a fish bigger than Hoshi had seen (if you didn't count the internet), roasted brown skin peppered with spices and smelling heavenly.

"Tell me this isn't a dream." Yahiko rubbed his eyes. Nagato began sniffling.

"It's not." Jiraya supplied as he began to pile the plates with huge servings for everyone. Once ready they wasted no time saying "Itadakimasu!" and digging in furiously with their chopsticks. Only Hoshi paused, giving the chopsticks a funny look.

"Hoshi," Jiraya addressed the only child not stuffing his face. "Eat while it's warm."

"Right," He muttered, gripping the chopsticks with uncertainty. He glared at the wooden sticks, before shifting them clumsily. Setting them aside Hoshi went for the fish with his fingers.

 _He's never used chopsticks before._ Jiraya felt a pang in his chest as he watched the boy hold the hot gobbet between his fingers, blowing before placing it in his mouth.

"Hoshi, you don't know how to use chopsticks?" Yahiko blurted out curiously through a mouth stuffed with fish. The white-haired boy looked at him irritably, wording his reply after he swallowed his own morsel.

"I've never used them before. I'll learn them when I'm not hungry. Nagato chew slowly, it's not going anywhere." He nagged at the redhead, but smiled softly.

They ate until they felt they were stuffed to their throats after which Jiraya finished the rest of the fish. They all looked at him gobble up a meal enough for three men. It made sense though, considering his size and capabilities.

"So," Jiraya sat on the floor one leg raised with his forearm resting against the knee. "That was quite a speech you gave to Orochimaru."

"Yeah, just what was that?" Yahiko put in his two cents. "I didn't even get half of what you said!"

"I understood him though. A little bit." Nagato spoke quietly and Jiraya belatedly realized he had not spoken at all before. Hoshi ruffled his red hair before putting an arm around him.

"That's Nagato for you. He's smart." Konan said proudly.

"Are you saying I'm stupid?" Yahiko levelled his gaze towards her.

"Yeah," She followed up with a smile to show she was joking. "And Hoshi-kun, your yukata's right side is over the left."

"So what, Konan-chan? Is there any problem with it?" Hoshi huffed. He knew only the dead had the right flap over the left, and he'd obtained that right.

"You're not a dead person." Konan replied evenly.

"Someone once told us we were dead, only we hadn't stopped breathing." Yahiko butted in.

"Those words are wrong-" And as she argued back and they bantered, the spymaster observed them silently. Yahiko seemed to be the leader, Hoshi also deferring to him despite being sharper and wiser.

The latter also paid continuous attention to everyone, and his eyes flitted to Jiraya multiple times as well even as they joked around. He seemed very mature for a child.

Whereas Yahiko was reprimanding and tough, Hoshi clearly had a soft spot for Nagato. Konan was cheery, but not as loud as Yahiko. Also very systematic from how she had consumed her meal, Jiraya had noticed.

"So," Jiraya cut in and they stopped whatever they were talking about, sitting up straight. "Why should I teach you ninjutsu? I want all of you to answer."

"Why? Because we need power! If we don't fight back, we don't get to live, and we don't get to change anything. It's always raining here...like this whole country is some goddamn cry-baby." Yahiko said, eyes burning. Jiraya said nothing, showed nothing, and turn Konan who was next to him.

"Me? I don't want to feel helpless. And I agree with Yahiko...we need power to change this country. Besides, I don't like what Orochimaru-san said, about us dying..." Konan trailed off, looking at her hands clasped in her lap. Nagato went next

"I-I don't want to be a b-burden to them...I hate fighting but..." Jiraya nodded towards Nagato, and all three turned to hear what Hoshi had to say, making him feel self-conscious.

 _You pretend to be wise just_ one _time..._ He thought before coughing in his hand.

"I want Amegakure to be a better village. No matter if you are a shinobi or a civilian. I know that's what I want, but if you ask me the truth?" Hoshi gazed at the orphans, cute little kittens that they were, smiling softly. "You're precious to me and I want to do everything I can to protect you.

"And then the other people too. It's not their fault that they were born in this place that's always in conflict. I want to work hard so that one day they'll be safe, and their children will grow up much better than the world their parents lived in. Sure, there are bad people, but most of them are bad because their fate was cruel. And that is just...sad."

And Jiraya sat still, soaking his words like a sponge. How similar their thoughts were, even if the only thing the Sannin had initially thought they shared was the hair colour. And beneath the various emotions displayed on their faces, anger, sorrow, uncertainty, he could detect the underlying current of hope. That they thought the jounin was their salvation.

And there was also the prophecy before him. Could his student, the one fated to wield the power to make or break this world be one of these? The Toad Sage knew he was being biased, but could such a person exist in Ame of all places? Shaking his head, the Sannin made up his mind and nodded.

"I'll teach you to be a ninja. From now on, call me Sensei."

* * *

 _One week later:_

Yahiko could barely contain his excitement when Jiraya began his first lesson. Even if was something as boring as just getting the feel for their chakra and then trying blow an origami shuriken off his forehead as he sat on the veranda with the other three, it was a step forward.

On his right, Nagato sat calmly while next to him Konan bit her lip, eyes closed to focus. To his left was Hoshi, trying to blow from the corner of his lips, and only managing to lift his white bangs.

Mentally, the boy from another world was mulling over what he had taken to calling Chakra theory, a precise summary of Jiraya's lecture on the spiritual energy the morning. Explaining to someone else was ideal in order to understand something in depth, but Hoshi did it to himself.

"Ho, looks like Konan is going to get it first." Jiraya informed them and snapped him out of his reverie, seeing the paper shift on her forehead. His prediction turned out right and Yahiko redoubled his efforts while their teacher placed another paper shuriken on her, telling her to blow two of them off.

Nagato was the next one to succeed. Yahiko snuck a look at Hoshi to see him looking back at him. His partner-in-crime smirked at him. Oh, it was _on._

"The last one to have the shuriken on his forehead will do the dishes for the next week." Jiraya offered them an incentive, grinning as their faces screwed with concentration. Five minutes later Yahiko was preparing to go capture some fish for lunch whilst an irritated Hoshi still sat with the shuriken on his forehead.

"Ha ha! Be prepared to do the dishes Hoshi! Oi Nagato, let's go catch dinner!" Yahiko jumped up in excitement. .

"May I, Jiraya-sensei?" Nagato asked politely.

"Go ahead. At least someone respects me." Jiraya placed his hands on hips, cocking an eyebrow at Yahiko.

"If you wanted respect you should have never made us wear those frog suits! You weird toad sage!" he shot back before running off, Nagato in tow.

Then there was a subtle shift in his demeanour as Jiraya placed his hand on Hoshi's head. "Konan, there's some paper for in the top drawer of the cabinet."

"Really? Thank you Jiraya-sensei!" She hurried inside, leaving the two alone.

"Having trouble? Keep forming your chakra." And the Sannin closed his eyes. Without his (partial) Sage Mode he didn't have much in the way of sensing abilities, but sensitivity to chakra was something a ninja learned as his years went by.

The student redoubled his efforts. Minutes passed and the teacher hid his shock behind an impassive face, vacillating in his mind before coming to a conclusion.

"I can't sense a drop of chakra in you." Said he with the grief of a doctor telling a patient they were terminally ill. And beneath his palm his student stilled, deflating. Konan chose that moment to walk out, looking uncomfortable.

"I'll go check on Nagato and Yahiko." She said and Hoshi belatedly realized she had been eavesdropping. None of them paid attention to the girl as she skipped past them.

"Isn't there anyway I can perform ninjutsu without innate chakra?" Hoshi asked weakly, slumping to the floor. He briefly wondered if he should start shouting about youth from now on. Would the others be more freaked out by that, or the fact that he couldn't become a ninja alongside them?

"No." Jiraya confirmed. "But it does explain how you were unaffected by Orochimaru's killing intent. You never felt it."

"But I did feel that. I also felt you level your own at him to make him stop." Hoshi rolled on the ground slowly, replying absently.

Jiraya blinked. It was one thing to feel widespread killing intent or just levelled at you, because it was a product of Yin chakra, something abstract that shinobi and even civilians felt on some intrinsic level, for everything that was living contained chakra and responded to it.

And he himself was a jounin and a budding spymaster, well-versed in psychology and able to utilize the phenomenon to his benefit but an untrained, undisciplined kid had picked up on his? And diluted as it was for his mean-spirited teammate, managed to steady against Orochimaru's?

As the Sage processed this, Hoshi pondered whether he and Jiraya ever have those moments where they'd passionately call out to each other with increasing volume, accompanied by a sunset genjutsu? Who knows?

 _Perhaps..._ Jiraya thought. It was dangerous, the elders would call him stupid and _mean it_ , a chakra-deficient kid wouldn't be accepted by the toads even if he let him sign the contract, but if on the off-chance he could do that _..._ Jiraya abandoned the thought.

"Sensei, you haven't said anything for a while." Hoshi said and Jiraya pretended to snap out of his thoughts. A shinobi was alert at all times, after all.

"My bad, I was just thinking about how tough your taijutsu and shurikenjutsu training will be," Jiraya grinned. "Prepare to go to hell and back, boy. You said you wanted to be a ninja."

Hoshi blanched, thinking of a twelve year old blond being pushed down a cliff to get the hang of the Summoning Jutsu. Before Jiraya could exploit his fear with his teasing, a familiar voice shouted at them.

"Sensei! Help! Yahiko and Nagato are in trouble!" Konan ran towards them, panting harshly and expression wild. In the blink of an eye Jiraya was on his feet, making a shadow clone as he leapt into the rain and vanished in an instant. The shadow clone grabbed Konan and body-flickered back to the house in the time Hoshi realized that the shadow clone did not follow the momentum of the original.

"Stay here," the clone commanded. "I'll track them down in no time." They complied, Hoshi wondering just how much time it would take the jounin to reach their fishing spot at ninja-speed.

After making sure Konan was alright, Jiraya's clone ushered them inside the cabin and the girl sat down at her fixed spot on their small table. Her shoulders sagged in relief as she laid her arms on the table, placing her head above.

Hoshi joined her, saying nothing put giving her comforting pat on the head. Nagato had the Rinnegan, and he knew what was going to happen anyway. Today was the day when the last person everyone expected to kill would take a life.

"Hey hey, you've got the Great Toad Sage to the rescue! No harm will come to my cute little students while I live! Except Yahiko, he's not very cute. But no one will touch a hair on his head!" Even when giving reassurance, their teacher couldn't help but brag and make one of his ridiculous poses. But it worked and the children smiled a little.

 _That's right_ , Konan thought. _Everything will be alright, because Jiraya-sensei is here_.

* * *

A/N: Couldn't find what killing intent actually was so made my own definition. Whelp.


	3. Compass

A/N: Not much dialogue in this, but world building. Thanks for the follows and favourites!

* * *

"You're enjoying...this...aren't you?" Hoshi panted, walking on his hands around the cabin, on his thirty-sixth lap.

"Come now, you should be able do a fifty!" Jiraya gave an exaggerated laugh from the roof, keeping an eye on the other three as they went through taijutsu forms. Hoshi had been stubborn enough to stay after the thirtieth lap to exceed the jounin's expectations.

Hoshi grunted with exertion, slowing down here and there to keep his balance, feeling his arms and shoulder blades burn in protest, but going around one more time...and just _one_ more, in order to impress Jiraya. He knew the jounin was pretending to have ridiculous expectations, but he had decided he would show him so he _would_ show him.

He'd had quite enough of just aerobics and eating in the first few months. Jiraya meant well and was knowledgeable in building up their malnourished frames, but it was a mind-numbing routine between lectures and learning to adjust sleep cycles for him, and chakra meditation.

Hoshi could definitely feel the chakra, but he felt it around him, not within. And it was not detailed enough for practical use, just enough that he felt four people besides him. Not any idea about how much each of them had like a true sensor but...he was sure it'd come into use someday.

"Ho, I think that's enough." Jiraya spoke, raising an eyebrow around the fortieth lap. In truth the Toad Sage had expected half the number he had been using to egg his student on, but their antics just reminded him that these weren't academy students. They didn't have games to play, friends to hang out with at an arcade or homework or chores to do at home to preoccupy their time.

 _You said you'd take care of us until we were ready, but you'll abandon us when it becomes inconvenient to look after us._ Yahiko had told him sombrely. _We need to learn all we can while you're here._

"Ne...ver!" Hoshi gritted his teeth. Internally he knew too much exercise would be counterproductive, but he needed to endure more. He'd held it in well when Jiraya had told him he had no chakra, but now the frustration and anger at being short-changed by fate was back full force.

 _Rasengan. Chidori. Tree and water walking. Replacement and Transformation. Summoning Jutsu. Chakra-powered leaps. Sealing._

 _I was born to be a muggle._ _God_ -

"-damn it!"

"Well if you feel so strongly about it, carry on." Jiraya took mock offense. "But just so you know, you passed a fifty three laps ago."

"I- what?!" Hoshi fell over, making a small splash. Jiraya refrained from mentioning he was still seven laps away, but that was clearly not the way to handle this student. Hoshi had a frightening amount of endurance. Even if his pace was a crawl, he had not stopped.

"Hmm, I think that's enough for today?" Jiraya jumped down, not making a sound even as he landed on water. Hoshi only moaned, feeling like throwing up from overexertion.

"Right." The jounin picked him up with a single hand. "Tomorrow we train your legs."

And next morning had the white-haired boy and his friends going around in circles in frog-leaps after the obligatory running, clearly wondering just why _oh why_ had he not expected this from Jiraya.

In the afternoon they were back to chakra exercises, Konan ahead of them by a clear margin. Leaving the three boys to concentrate on their own to push up small paper shurikens from the back of their hands (Hoshi still had his on the forehead), Jiraya took the girl aside and handed her a few blue origami papers.

"As I've said before, chakra can be conducted through nearly everything," Jiraya began.

"Like trees, water, walls." Konan supplied like a student at the top of her class.

"And even paper," he allowed that to sink in as the girl looked at the sheet in her hand. "Today is all about getting the feel for your chakra as it travels through paper. It's okay if it tears, you can always ask for more."

The first try did just that, tearing the paper neatly in line with her thumb as she imbued it with chakra. Not letting it go to waste, Konan used the remaining paper to adjust her flow.

 _Like the paper is a biscuit and my chakra is milk_. She thought, thinking of the way those biscuits crumbled if she dunked them in her watery milk.

Carefully dunk the biscuit in the liquid – _her chakra crept into the paper-_ carefully, and now to withdraw the chakra so it the biscuit didn't crumble and fall into the milk itself...

Her paper ripped.

"It's only been three months." Jiraya said, giving an encouraging smile as she looked towards him with disappointment. Instead he gestured with his chin towards Hoshi, still stuck on the first exercise but refusing to give up.

The jounin looked over the children, all of them engrossed in their task before surreptitiously sending a clone off to capture lunch.

Hoshi clenched his teeth, going over what Jiraya had taught them in lectures.

 _Physical energy + Spiritual energy = Chakra._ _Where my physical prowess is ahead the other three but the latter part of the sum is barely there, according to Jiraya. Is it because I died once that I lack spiritual energy? What was it exactly? What is honed by meditation and mental effort, the one thing I am not applying enough..._

 _Emotional content,_ The thought came to the forefront of his mind. Hoshi balanced his breathing, five in and five out. Focusing not on the chakra that ran through his body from his navel, which was not his purpose. That was the finger pointing to the moon, the distraction from the heavenly body.

A drop of sweat slid across his jaw and dripped from his chin, and he was _aware,_ of the power within him and it surged, trying to burst out- no, it did not want to go out. It didn't want escape, it wanted _purpose_.

The paper shuriken on his forehead shot upwards, hitting the wooden roof of the veranda with a soft thud.

"I'm done." Hoshi said impassively, but lost his fight against the grin that splayed on his face. Utter joy blossomed within him on having violated the laws of physics, though the others understood his elation as something simpler, the joy of finally getting something down.

"About damn time! I thought you wouldn't be able to learn ninjutsu," Yahiko smirked. "But we're still way ahead of you, isn't that right Nagato?"

"Um, don't be mean Yahiko. And congratulations, Hoshi." Nagato smiled. Konan beamed alongside him.

"Yes yes," Jiraya nodded sagely. "Now back to practice, shoo. And Hoshi, you need even more of it to catch up! I'll even let you wear a toad-suit for the rest of the day if you can do it ten times successfully."

"If I do it twenty times, can I refuse that punishment?"

"Of course- wait, punishment?! Don't you know what an _honour_ it is to wear one of my special, awesome-" And Hoshi smiled wryly before picking up his paper shuriken again and getting back to practice, tuning the jounin out as he went on a surprisingly long tirade about how special toads were.

And true to his words, Hoshi did it twenty times, even if it meant staying out for an half an hour more. The concept and mental preparation got easier each time, but his fatigue grew.

 _I feel like I've watched a whole twenty-four episode anime._

He had ample time to rest in the afternoon before leaving with Konan in the evening to get dinner. The ninjas in the area had lessened and Jiraya had deemed it safe for them to go hunt on their own.

"So, who'll get the bait?" Konan asked conversationally as they walked.

"Not me." Hoshi made a face. Due to how much it rained, there was no shortage of worms.

"Prissy." Konan called and Hoshi glared back.

"I do not fear them, simply dislike them." As if to prove his point, he scanned the soil around them before picking one up. "Here, keep it safe," he tossed it the girl who took it with an amused smile.

"Alright, but you're still prissy." Konan's hand disappeared in her sleeve.

"And you're still pretty." Hoshi flashed a smile, giving her a youthful thumbs-up.

"That's a compliment," Konan spluttered, obviously not expecting it.

"Here I thought we were saying untrue things about each other." Hoshi blinked innocently, soppy white hair contrasting with doe-like eyes to look like a wet puppy.

" _Oh_. Bastard," Konan muttered, picking up another worm and shoving it down his yukata's collar. Even as he yelped and ran forward to get it out, Hoshi couldn't help but think it had been worth it.

They shared the task of skewering the live bait on hooks attached to ninja-wire, before plunging them into the river.

"You'll carry the fish." Konan said as they waited. Hoshi said stared into the rain impassively, their wires moving erratically in the river's current.

"Half of them?"

"I carried _all_ of the worms."

Hoshi tried not to shiver and the corner of Konan's mouth twitched. None of them were truly averse to carrying fish, but it was still cold to hold and tended to leave its smell on you.

* * *

After dinner that night (punctuated by the sky turning black, no sign of the rain letting up)Hoshi and Konan found themselves sitting down with paper and an inkwell in front of them, brush in hand. Yahiko and Nagato cleared and washed the utensils in the sink behind them.

"Now, before any of you complain how this has nothing to do with ninjutsu, I've come to realize you're not exactly educated. Therefore, you must learn to read and write." The jounin picked up a brush and dipped it gingerly, before moving it along the paper with a flourish and then held it out in front to show them the Kanji.

"Toad," Hoshi deadpanned, "just what did I expect?"

"Ho, aren't you smart?" Jiraya shot back, trying not to sound peeved at the boy's accurate guess. Hoshi shrugged, then as if an idea came to him, grinned brightly.

"Well," He took the brush from his teacher's hands, before dipping it gently in ink. "I do know many things." And he wrote down hiragana and katakana, measured strokes with almost surgical precision as he called out their sounds. Then he wrote the kanji for star i.e. Hoshi, and circled it neatly.

Jiraya gave his page one blank look. "Alright, memorize them and practice writing." He handed Hoshi's paper to Nagato.

"Um, I don't know kanji but I know the rest." Nagato pointed out. Jiraya had no shortage of writing material and soon the redhead was supervising his other friends that didn't know how to write.

The teacher and student with matching hair colour occupied the opposite side of the table. "So," Jiraya began, unfurling a small scroll. "Why don't you show me how good you are with the brush and paper?"

Hoshi gave one cocky smirk, remembering hours upon hours of calligraphy and drawing once he had gotten enrolled into a school in the previous world. Jiraya's calligraphy brush was thicker and foreign to hold, but it would do.

The boy set the scroll vertically in front of him, left index finger and thumb sliding down the paper and taking measurements. He looked at Jiraya's face from the corner of his eye, gently dipped his brush and then started.

In the middle he wrote the kanji for toad, drew two lines above and below it. Hoshi paused, before enclosing the word in a rectangle and then dipping his brush again before drawing a fluid line nearly perpendicular to it, letting the natural motion of his wrist travel up again.

The other three kids were long done with their lesson by the time Hoshi finally put down the brush.

"Wow, you drew Jiraya-sensei!" Konan exclaimed, comparing the drawing to the real person. Hoshi only nodded, frowning at how the nose had come out, the way ink smudged around one of the eyes, how the bangs on the left side weren't as long as the other, how the distance between the upper lip and chin seemed off...he sighed.

"If I draw three or more times it will come out better. This is not good at all." Hoshi bit his lip. He needed practice. His hold on the brush didn't quite match one with a pen, and that one manga about drawing manga did not cover this topic for him.

"Not to say you suck, but what a waste of paper man." Yahiko said.

"What did you say?! Even this third-rate sketch of my handsomeness, if used as an advertisement will bring a fortune at the hand of female customers alone, have princesses sending messengers for marriage interviews and raise the morale of all lady patients in a hospital, soothing their pains and healing all wounds, even those within their hearts from their men not living up to my legend!" Jiraya exclaimed.

" _Sensei_ ," They all groaned collectively.

"The kanji looks good, very good in fact, nice strokes, and curve of the jaw he did in one movement, nice transition from thick to thin..." Jiraya scratched his chin, pretending to be oblivious.

"Didn't he say it was a third-rate sketch?" Konan asked rhetorically.

"He's not exactly praising the sketch." Hoshi supplied.

"Or maybe he doesn't want to admit the lame sketch looks just like him." Yahiko said smugly.

"Hoshi," Jiraya began, uncharacteristically serious, ignoring everything that had been going on. "Draw this." From somewhere he took out an explosion tag.

"...are you sure, Sensei?" Hoshi took the paper with apprehension.

"If you don't want to, I won't push you." Jiraya replied evenly. The student gazed at the teacher, not a hint of emotion or body language for him to pick up on.

There was something Jiraya wanted to see, and Hoshi would be damned if he let the opportunity to learn about Fuinjutsu go. He picked up the brush again and rolled the scroll further, paying attention to every little squiggle, cut and design, going over the motions in the air before dipping the brush and copying the design.

Drawing with a reference was always easier, and the Kanji in the centre he wrote with leisure after having drawing the complete design.

Hoshi pushed the scroll towards Jiraya and the sound returned to his world. How long had Konan and Yahiko been chatting and when did Nagato move behind him to look at his work?

Jiraya inspected the design, not bothering to double check with the tag itself. At his level he probably knew a plethora of designs by heart. And he knew from a glance Hoshi's first try had been better than his own.

After thinking the boy to be like him, witnessing his struggles with the basic chakra exercise and drive in training what he could do, the brat had gone and pulled an Orochimaru on him; a near-perfect explosive tag on his first try in less than half an hour.

And what Hoshi had discovered was that, along with memories and knowledge, he still had an exponentially easier time learning skills he had before. Even though this body was nothing like his previous one.

"Hoshi, I don't need to ask to know if you want to learn Fuinjutsu. But," There was always a 'but' wasn't there? "You're not allowed to tell anyone; even if they need help they must not know you can do Fuinjutsu."

Hoshi nodded slowly. "Why though?"

"If you can learn it, you'll be the first Fuinjutsu specialist in Ame. You will be an active target of shinobi from many a village. It will be different from just being a thorn in some people's side."

 _Oh._ Hoshi tried not to gulp, gave no response and letting the silence stretch into awkwardness.

"You think we'd let them just take him? I'd like to see them bastards try." Yahiko snorted.

"Yeah, let them try." Nagato spoke barely above a whisper, Rinnegan burning with conviction.

"If he can learn it in the first place," Konan teased and then ducked to evade a paper shuriken, courtesy of Hoshi.

"Is my handwriting really that good?" Hoshi asked Jiraya, not rising to her bait.

"Well, that and it doesn't require a lot of chakra control." That he used chakra in bursts, Jiraya didn't say. Instead of moulding it and allowing it to pass with control, his student released it as soon as it was formed. Strangely enough, it worked for him.

"I see." It looked like Hoshi had swallowed something bitter but agreed with his teacher's assessment. "How long does it take?"

"Hmm, nearly half a decade for the basics, and then your mind is the limit," They whispered furiously wondering how long Jiraya actually planned to stay with them while the jounin went on, "what you can manage to do with sealing has no known limits. But enough castles in the air, time to get started."

Hoshi smiled. Calculus or sealing, which was harder?

* * *

When attending school, many a students, rather countless people argued against the system being designed for those with superior memorizing capabilities. Not every student had the same capacity or attention span; they needed further catering, even as they made life hell for teachers simply trying to do their job.

Although Hoshi had not paid much attention to the argument since he was happy to just go to a school and did his best to memorize and extrapolate concepts to the best of his ability to not fall behind the actual purpose of learning, he was feeling much sympathy for everyone he had considered a privileged whiner.

There were hundreds of thousands of Kanji. He woke before the sun was up, taking advantage of the fact memorization was several times faster in those moments after sleeping that he would revise yesterday's lesson (much longer and harder than his other companion's, they were learning to read and write, not seal).

Then Jiraya would watch over their warm ups, thankfully designed without being related to the movement or life of a toad. It did not fail to stop him from matching the rhythm of their movement with his recital of a poem by toads.

Then they went through the entire order of taijutsu forms they knew, doing a hundred reps of punches and kicks before it was light enough to know the sun was up behind the eternal shield of clouds.

If it was not his turn to capture breakfast Hoshi would sit down with a wooden board and take out his carefully kept brush Jiraya had given him and practice drawing shapes, washing the board to remove the ink and using the other side before repeating the progress. It saved a lot of paper and ink (which was mixed with water to ease its removal as well and increase quantity).

After breakfast was a small break to allow food to settle, before launching into exercises, each day reserved for certain muscle groups. Because they were not ready to admit where their limits lay, especially Yahiko (and Hoshi if he got pissed by a joke), Jiraya had to judge for himself when to call for stops.

When it came to sparring, initially Jiraya took them on himself to take care of the bigger problems himself before allowing them to spar amongst themselves. The jounin also scoured a few battles to steal a few weapon pouches for his students.

After lunch they worked on meditation and chakra control exercises, with Jiraya reviewing their hand-seals and speed daily, but no jutsu. Even in a hidden village, besides the Academy Set, access to jutsus was restricted unless they were obtained from one's family or clan, or by stolen without being caught (at which point it the genin had actually earned it).

When Jiraya told this to them, it clicked to Hoshi why Kakashi had not taught any jutsu to his team or seen any other genin claiming to be taught a jutsu by their sensei regarding his knowledge of anime.

Most of them had clan techniques Naruto learned shadow clone by himself, Sakura's offensive arsenal came after the knowledge that she had made chunin, Gai taught Lee out of sheer favouritism, Kakashi waited until Sasuke went up against a freakin' _Jinchuuriki_ to teach him Chidori (No wonder he defected).

When it came to chakra, Nagato had the largest reserves among them; Konan had better control, Yahiko fell somewhere between the two and Hoshi was the most obstinate despite having the smallest supply.

He made up for it by working hard at taijutsu. Very much inspired by Bruce Lee and trying to incorporate chakra into his offense and defence, the boy spent much longer working his body.

When one year passed, Jiraya deemed it acceptable enough to teach them Substitution and Clone techniques. Going beyond his expectations, Konan and Nagato learned it within a month, Yahiko following a few days later.

Frustrated due to his lack of progress and Jiraya's still basic lessons where he learned little more than drawing with precision than any Fuinjutsu theory, Hoshi drove himself to chakra exhaustion by throwing caution to the wind but managed to get the techniques down on his forty-sixth day.

The Clone technique Hoshi could not use well besides using it to create an afterimage of a feint in taijutsu, projecting the charka to form an image and then exiting it with physical effort. But the substitution worked all too well for him, since it was a spur of the moment move.

Nagato was taller, Yahiko had weight on him and Konan fought at range, but Hoshi had the better reflexes and strategies (He was sure to have nearly a five or six more years of mental age as well).

"Too bad you're exhausted, now I can't teach you how to make a basic seal tonight." Jiraya sighed dramatically at dinner, and Hoshi's eye-twitched throughout washing their dishes, but after a warm bath he fell asleep at soon as his head hit his cushion on the futon.

* * *

' _I heard my dad say your people are bad. They killed our people and keep killing them. They also say that in school.'_

 _And you don't know my dad is dead because your people killed him, right?_

' _I'm sorry.'_

 _Just drop it. Let's play football before the rainclouds completely go away._

Suddenly, there was an explosion to his right-

* * *

Hoshi woke up to the clatter of bowls in the sink to his right. A spike of pain shot through his core muscles as he struggled to get up fast.

"Good morning Hoshi," Nagato greeted. The sun wasn't up, but their day began nearly an hour and half before it shone.

"What time is it? Where are the others?" he asked curtly.

"They're outside, warming up. Your breakfast is on the table." Nagato supplied before scurrying off. Hoshi was a morning person whose annoyance was directly proportional to how late he woke up, and the timid boy did not desire to tell him he had woken up late at all.

For the usually cool-tempered and adult-like Hoshi to lose his cool was the funniest sight to ever be seen according to the others, but Nagato felt it was mean of them to all band against him.

Trying to shrug off the strain and exhaustion from his training, Hoshi set about his routine. The last one to wake up had to fold up the futons and blankets, as well as do the dishes. Jiraya made them bathe before sleeping so there was no need for a morning bath, just washing his face and rinsing his mouth was enough.

Drying his face, Hoshi checked his visage in the small bathroom mirror. The bangs on the side of his face were longer, and he let the fringes in-between cover his forehead to hide the natural partition in the middle. It was not his face, but it belonged to him regardless.

His eyes unnerved him. No matter how hard he tried, no matter where he took the mirror to see, Hoshi could not make out any structures within his iris, or even his pupil. Once or twice he'd tried using chakra to see if he had some sort of Byakugan but gave up when nothing happened.

It was unnatural, but nothing he could help, Hoshi concluded as he sat down for his meal; a small loaf for carbohydrates, fish for proteins and other nutrients and an apple for vitamins. A year and a half ago he would have been wandering markets and stealing from beneath the noses of shopkeepers and merchants, picking the occasional pocket for money to actually buy something.

It was a relief he had never had to do that since Jiraya decided to keep them on a proper diet, no matter where he kept bringing the food and gear from, though he had a good idea about their weapons. They had to be wiped clean before Jiraya blunted them for their use.

In minutes he was finished and did his chores before walking outside where Jiraya was supervising a three-way spar between the other children. According to the rules any hit to a vital or a strike that would incapacitate would eliminate one participant.

"No training for you today." Jiraya's tone brooked no nonsense as Hoshi stood next to him, whereas he should have been resting inside.

"Not even a good morning Sensei?" Hoshi mumbled but Jiraya paid him no more attention than he did to the raindrops falling over them, and soon another spectator stood on the ground.

Yahiko charged at Nagato, throwing three shurikens in arc towards Konan as she charged him from the right. Nagato readied his stance to counter Yahiko but jerked his head back to avoid a shuriken courtesy of Konan, followed by a roundhouse kick to push the other boy back, using the advantage of his longer limbs.

Or would have been an advantage if Yahiko had not deflected the kick with the forearm guarding his ribs, and sensing his hesitation closed the distance with a punch to the solar plexus as if to say _now is NOT the time to be nice._

The redhead regained his balanced and turned ninety degrees, bending at the stomach in a desperate attempt to avoid the blow.

 _At least he didn't cover his face and blocked this time_. Hoshi thought, eyes drifting to Konan as she took the opportunity to use a few shurikens to scatter the two boys.

Primarily a long range fighter, she did not hesitate to engage in hand-to-hand combat as she quickly rounded on the Nagato, whose hands were already flipping through seals for substitution with any of the numerous rocks Jiraya had strewn across their improvised training field.

Chakra-enhanced feet danced on the slick battlefield as Yahiko forced Konan into close-quarters from the side as Nagato escaped, pressing the advantage of his upper-body strength.

Konan took his punch straight to the shoulder, snaked her arm around his, gripping his biceps to cut off any dodging attempts as she tried to knee his stomach. Yahiko blocked it with the palm of his free hand before butting his head against hers, making her see stars.

The broke apart when Nagato approached them from both sides using a Clone jutsu, managing to react before any closed in. Their kunais passed through the both harmlessly, before Nagato used another substitution to return to his position, levelling a kunai inches away from Yahiko's throat.

"Well, shit."

"Yahiko, you're out!" Jiraya shouted over the distance, offering a grin as Yahiko made a face, grumbling as he extracted himself from the field, leaving only Konan and Nagato.

Unsurprisingly, Konan took the initiative, whipping out a kunai as she leapt, the redhead spreading his feet apart as he swung his arm, his momentum allowing him to meet the blue-haired girl's charge mid-air, blades clanging loudly.

Konan spun and Nagato evaded her kick with another substitution, her shin colliding with a rock.

"Bastard! God _damn_ it!" Konan's eyes scrunched in pain as she rubbed her leg.

Nagato wisely did not yell back an apology, but ran towards her again, guilt plain as the nose on his face. He didn't have much time to be surprised as nearly a dozen shuriken headed his way, a third of which were made of paper. Panicking, he stopped mid-charge and ducked.

"Get him Konan!" Hoshi couldn't help but cheer, seeing her new technique.

"You took me out, don't you lose Nagato!" Yahiko took the chance seeing Jiraya wasn't minding the disruption.

Both fighters were evenly matched, turning the spar into a series of blocks, ripostes and dodges.

The moment Nagato knocked her kunai out of her hand Konan ducked low and carefully surveyed the battlefield before throwing the last of her shuriken, all of them paper before quickly flying through some hand-seals.

Using the substitution jutsu on the rock she had made Nagato was moving towards, Konan used his own tactic against him, taking out a kunai and slipping past his hasty block to hit his chest with the tip.

"Nagato, you're out!"

"You did good Nagato." Hoshi said as they walked back.

"What about me?" Konan asked expectantly, sweeping her bangs to the side.

"You were amazing. All those time you were making paper shuriken I thought you were practicing your control. To think they could be used like _that_ is...pretty cool." Hoshi admitted. He turned to Yahiko. "Are you feeling left out?"

"I don't need you to tell me I'm awesome."

"Hoshi hates lying anyway." Nagato added all of sudden, smiling shyly.

"Oi Nagato, since when do you make fun of me? Hoshi-jiisan you corrupted him didn't you?" Yahiko smiled cheekily.

"I am _not_ that old," Hoshi glared, covering his hair defensively.

"Sure, Hoshi- _jiichan_ ," Konan said in a singsong voice.

"Oh, just you _wait_ until the next taijutsu-only spar." Hoshi muttered and immediately their laughter took on a nervous note.

Jiraya looked over them, smiling gently. No matter how hard he pushed them, no matter how unreasonable his demands sounded, from wearing his toad costumes to practicing a thousand reps of taijutsu forms, meditating and performing chakra control for morning till afternoon they complied.

Sure they grumbled, sometimes outright refused as children were won't to do but got the job done. Perhaps more than genetics or innate ability, circumstances made a genius, the sage mused.

 _How would a tree know its strength unless it is forced to part with its leaves against the harsh weather, learn to stay rooted against the perilous winds, grow through it all to face the spring? Hmm, on second thought I have too many sayings related to forests and leaves._ Jiraya mused.

"We still have a lecture to analyse your spar. After that do what you want, it's your free day." Which came after half a year of training and even then they were up for a spar before the sun rose without grumbling much.

"Yes sensei," They chorused. They reached home and switched their Hop-In planks to show the red side from white indicating that they were in. The planks were nailed to the wall with a string, and had cute little toad face drawn on top.

"So, Konan," Jiraya began. "You've come a far way with your inventiveness. Paper shurikens, finally used them in a fight. But that last tactic? Was it a Creative use of Substitution jutsu? Yes. But would you have tried that with Hoshi? You assumed you had fully gauged your opponent. Even if it was correct, that is a bad habit, and many a bad habit has killed countless good ninjas.

"There are people out there who stop breathing but do not die. You had neither a back-up plan nor a back-up to your back-up plan. Think ahead of 'ahead'."

Konan nodded, instead of looking down. Jiraya felt grateful that he didn't need to mince his words with his students.

"Next, Nagato. You've got big chakra reserves for your age, and you've got the basic jutsus down solid, but you think too much. Konan should not have been able to get the drop on you so easily. You moulded chakra inefficiently and were too tired to react properly. But good work on using Substitution without hand-seals."

"I'll practice twice as hard on chakra control," Nagato promised.

"And you, Yahiko. You've got guts, and your taijutsu is great, but your main tactic is to close in and force the fight to continue without ninjutsu, despite how much you insisted I teach it to you," The orange-haired boy blushed slightly and had the grace to not interrupt as Jiraya continued, "and you need to focus more on multi-tasking, try to think of more things besides taking the enemy down. I know you can do it."

"Yes sensei." Yahiko acknowledged.

"Starting tomorrow you can spar on your own. Now, I need to think about my novel." The jounin shooed them with his hand and they scrambled to their feet.

"Hey look, the rain has nearly stopped!" Yahiko jumped out the house, looking up easily without the rain to pester his eyelids. One by one they walked out, silently looking at the brightest sky they had seen in their lives.

"I'm going back to practice Fuinjutsu." Hoshi called after them. Turned and walked away to the safety of shelter and his mentor, before the sky completely cleared.


	4. Orbit

Lack of dialogue made this chapter hard to write...thanks for following and favouriting, if anyone wants to beta for grammar and spelling or coherence, PM me.

* * *

"Jiraya-sensei, will Hoshi be alright?" Konan asked as she tried to fold a crane using chakra only. The boy in question was thumping his head against the floor, muttering something that sounded to her like " _Andwae, andwae, andwae..._ "

"Oh, him?" Jiraya scratched his head, more focused on Yahiko and Nagato's shuriken practice. He knew they were competent and a cut or two was nothing for a ninja but damn if it didn't feel like they were kids of his own. "I don't know."

"Do you know what he was talking about?" The blue-haired girl gingerly pulled the wings, cutting off her chakra to prevent it from tearing.

Jiraya sighed. "No. Geez, he makes _some toads_ seem smart."

* * *

 _Half an hour ago:_

"So you just conduct your chakra in through these ends, put the tips of your fingers here pour as much as you can without tearing paper up. A small amount of chakra on the 'Explode' kanji will set off in two and a half seconds." Said Jiraya, pushing the seal Hoshi had made towards him.

The white-haired boy blinked. "Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"There's no need to seal explosive material inside the tag and then set it off with fire?"

"Well, this seal design enables air to ignite a corner of the tag and set it off by itself when tied to a kunai, but you don't actually seal anything into the tag."

Quite sceptic, Hoshi did just that, before taking out a blunt and rusted kunai. Excusing himself he went out, followed by a blast out in the rain.

A blast that sounded like a gunpowder explosion, looked like a gunpowder explosion but left no residue besides bits of active chakra, fading from Hoshi's senses like dying sparks of a firework.

 _Considering the amount of work I've put into the tag, I would equate it to simply picking up an approximately five kilogram weight off the ground to my shoulder height and then let it go. The joules exerted in the process do_ not _equate the amount of energy that was contained in the blast._

Stepping back in, Hoshi picked up a paper from where Konan was settling down on the table to practice chakra/origami and took one and used the same amount of chakra he had in the explosive tag to rip it into shreds.

 _The volume of sound and kinetic energy gained by the paper of larger area than the explosive tag do not reflect the energy contained in the tag..._

The next paper he splattered with enough sealing ink to have the same amount as explosive tag and transferred chakra again. It ripped like a normal paper.

"The array has to be exact, just some chakra-infused ink and paper doesn't make a seal," Jiraya grinned, enjoying his pupil's confusion like his own master had years ago.

"But it doesn't make _sense_! I know it's converting energy, and chakra is supposed to be energy, but the ink somehow amplifies the gain with _no_ loss in quality-" unless the actual explosion was not a result but a side-effect of the overload caused by the seal on the paper due to severe loss in quality, but to make it explode so accurately confused him on that front, "and the same amount of chakra refuses to mirror such potential as a tag on normal paper and the same amount of energy doing different amounts of work when used similarly without a seal shows that seals can use some energy and not only convert it but _increase_ and _energy not supposed to work like that!_ "

His calculations were actually skewed without appropriate measurement but he was underestimating his guesses, so it shouldn't have been too much of a problem –a problem nonetheless, yes- but _still_. Jiraya had run him into the ground daily two years for this? Something even he didn't understand at the most basic level?

Hoshi could enlarge energy with efficiency out of his previous world but not without scribbling characters that required another greater degree of attention to detail.

Oh yeah, physics was probably being abused several levels above what he could understand (or not, but even then he wouldn't understand), the law of conservation of energy being violated in particular. Looks like he'd have to make something like a chakra-meter...

"Looks like I'll have to explain again." Jiraya bonked Hoshi on the head, ceasing his rambling and getting him to sit up straight. "Seals are just like toads-"

"Sensei," Hoshi hissed, scraping his teeth.

" _Fine_ ," The sage heaved an exaggerate sigh. "Seals are just like women-" The boy moved with the speed of a genin to cover Konan's ears. "-they just don't make fundamental sense. A seal-master who wishes to fully understand them can neither live with them, nor without. Seals are useful, but that's not entirely why we make them." Jiraya toned down his speech, pretending to be cowed by his little students.

He could still vividly remember when the Third Hokage, sat him down for sealing. _'Sealing is like sex Jiraya. It may be used to produce practical results, but that's not why we do it.'_ Good times, good times indeed.

Hoshi sat there listlessly. There was no internet and no doubt no one ever stored Fuinjutsu research in places difficult to access. If an explosive tag worked like _magic,_ they'd store it in places that gave no access.

In the beginning, Hoshi had felt that Fuinjutsu was like electronics, each component of the seal acting like a chakra-powered circuit in conjunction with Kanji, different shapes working as resistors or capacitors for stability, logic gates for cancelling out the flow of chakra at certain points with the Kanji giving the seal a function.

And then he found out a single battery could perform the work of a dozen depending on the diagram. Mind switching to Korean as he cursed, Hoshi began to knock his head against the table muttering " _No, no, no..._ "

Konan and Jiraya said something, until the latter said something about toads being smarter than him; toads which had never finished a science textbook and then tried to learn Fuinjutsu. The two watched in alarm as the white-haired boy twitched.

"Feel my damn youth!" Hoshi pounced with a flying kick (i.e. Dynamic Entry) on Jiraya, who caught his foot and tossed him out the open door like a shuriken without getting a hair out of place.

"Sensei, you did that on purpose." But Konan made no move to get up and retrieve her friend. In fact, she was trying to fight down a smile.

"But you thought it was funny, right?"

"...Don't tell him."

* * *

These past months Jiraya had turned into a demon from hell, pushing them to their limits and then forcing them to be broken.

There were days when the jounin used to run them ragged without a naps of barely an hour for days on end, but none quite reached the level of _insanity_ (and Hoshi used the term 'normal' for eighteen hours of training daily).

Ever since they had mastered climbing rocks with chakra and learned to walk on water to some degree as well, the Toad Sage began sneaking up on them, starting impromptu spars or dodging exercises daily, to the point the quartet felt jittery when the older man pulled nothing for a few hours, let alone a days.

(That time had been too much fun for Jiraya, but with the constant murderous gazes levelled towards him, he didn't laugh).

Right now, Hoshi had a good idea what the man was trying to do; A chunin exam simulation. They had each begun to show their own style, they had the basic three jutsu down (not including the Transformation for Hoshi); their chakra reserves had increased ever since the damn Sage had started to drive them insane.

All of his lectures on survival and team formations kicked in, cobwebs clearing from their minds as Nagato dodged a lethal kunai throw and Yahiko blocked a kick that dislocated his shoulder while the Sannin only uttered a single word; " _Run_."

Which had been two days ago, but paranoia had not let them sleep. Any love they had for Jiraya was lost. In Hoshi's perspective, it felt like he was back in his own world, where a single bullet would end should he sneeze in the wrong hiding place. (Not that Jiraya was out for blood...he wasn't, was he?)

A cursory glance showed Konan and Nagato keeping up, one with her control and the other with his reserves as they ran above a river. Yahiko was by all means above the average ninja his age, but he struggled to keep the pace they needed to evade Jiraya. Hoshi himself only exerted chakra for brief moments, using his muscles without chakra enhancement to leap, ignoring the pain for economy.

"Incoming!" Konan, their sensor alongside Nagato warned.

"Twelve, clone at four." Rinnegan observing, the redhead called out the positions of their sensei and water clone. The ability had come as a great surprise to Jiraya, but Nagato still couldn't differentiate a shadow clone from elemental ones.

"Konan, with me. Nagato, support. Hoshi, engage at four then regroup." Sprinting forward, Yahiko took charge with Konan behind him, readying her shuriken. Nagato fell to their middle, ready to provide long range support to both.

Hoshi sighed visibly, preparing to fight for the seventh time that day. Nearly seventy hours without any sleep, chakra continuously acting as his caffeine. Now adrenaline kicked into his system, remembering that Jiraya was giving them no mercy.

Rinnegan or not, Nagato would have drown two altercations back had they not gone to save him. Jiraya wasn't caring apparently.

 _By the Sage of Six Paths, he would have left us in the Forest of Death if he could have,_ Hoshi thought as the water clone tried to grab his ankle. Chakra burst from beneath his foot viciously, slipping out of danger but even before he landed Hoshi spun around and cocked a fist, instincts ringing true to see a face lined with red grinning at him.

The clone didn't talk as it dodged and deflected every single hit, before disengaging only to flick his eyes to the side for an instant and then slip his finger through one of the many kunai and shurikens, flung at him by Nagato.

Hoshi pulled out his own weapons in haste, gaining another small cut on his left hand he used to fling out shurikens as he palmed a kunai in reverse grip with his right. Nagato locked eyes with him, a fleeting connection in which they understood each other, then gathered chakra and reached into his pouch.

Hoshi charged at the Sannin, slashing with his kunai but the clone ducked with a sweeping kick, missing Nagato's second barrage of shurikens aimed for his back whilst forcing Hoshi to jump into the path of friendly fire and breaking Nagato's charge by tossing his stolen kunai back at the redhead.

In a rare display of aggression he rushed while deflecting the incoming kunai with his second, charging with a spinning kicking towards the clone, Hoshi giving a distraction by engaging furiously in close quarters, before a solid kick sent him flying away.

The clone thought nothing of the kunai Hoshi finally slung at him, turning his to the side to let it sail by. Nagato vanished and a solid punch to the back, right where the kidney was located, dispelled the clone into water.

Then he fell through the surface, substitution on a moving kunai knocking him out like a light, exhausted, unconscious.

Panicking, Hoshi dove beneath the surface in desperation, feet acting as jets as he pushed his chakra network to the final limit. The moment he managed to grab cloth –possibly Nagato's shirt- his right leg cramped.

Cuts stinging due to salty water the boy found the kunai with an explosive tag – and hoped the other two noticed when he sent it upwards, imbued with chakra. Vaguely he recalled he was supposed to aid Yahiko and Konan, not ask for help from them.

By the time he had counted to a hundred and three, help arrived and they were pulled out of the water by his other teammates. Dripping heavily over the wet, rocky ground, Hoshi heaved and threw up. Nothing but spittle and water fell to the ground, specked with a little blood.

"Sta...Status?" he breathed with great strain.

"Left as soon as the clone was dispelled. We are to return home." Yahiko answered, panting just as harsh. Hoshi checked Nagato's breathing before asking about Konan.

"Getting food, son of a bitch isn't getting us any." he stretched, letting out small curse as his muscles heated up. Hoshi closed his eyes, rolling over to get the annoying patter of raindrops off his face. He could have slept on the rocks for all he cared.

"I can't believe we lived." Yahiko snorted at Hoshi's statement, but then his eyes widened in disbelief. Feeling eyes on him, Hoshi stopped scribbling in the mud to ask, "What?"

"You're...I give up. You've got more nuts loose than the damned Sage." Hoshi gave a depreciating laugh from where he was drawing a cat on the soil.

"It's not a seal, or practice." Thinking back on it, even the Sannin could not have imagined the passion –that is, boredom and memories of much more rigorous study routine- with which he approached the art of Fuinjutsu, only expecting him to learn the basics to make their own storage scroll and tags.

Hoshi would bet his stolen uniform that most people didn't attempt to learn Fuinjutsu because it was one part of a ninja's life which was downright academic. Coming from his previous environment, he felt less someone accomplished, more a one-eyed king in a crowd of blind people.

None of that had to do with drawing Hello Kitty every once in a while. By the time Nagato came to, Konan was back with a fish half her height, its bottom flat while its spine curved.

"And you call yourselves men," She spat while throwing the dead animal at Hoshi. It struck him in the face with a satisfying slap. He was too tired to retort, but a pulse of chakra rejuvenated him enough to toss the fish to Yahiko as he draped Nagato's arms over his shoulders.

Staggering, he pushed more chakra to his legs to stand up. "Let's take the land route," he grunted, aware that they were only a few miles from their hideout. Nagato was much lighter than the rock-filled sacs Jiraya made them run with during training, so it wasn't something he couldn't handle. Or rather, something chakra couldn't solve.

"You spoil him too much." Konan grumbled, marching slowly and Yahiko secured the fish to his back with ninja-wire.

"My motherly instincts kick in. And you call yourself a woman," Hoshi gave a sloppy grin as she glared daggers at him.

"Wake him up when we're halfway home." Yahiko said and moved forward, setting a fast pace which looked almost lazy compared to their evasion of the Sannin. Nagato's nap was about to be cut short however, as Konan reached and smoothed her collar with a single finger.

 _One hostile inbound._

"Nagato, wake up." Hoshi whispered. "Oi, little brother," the new form of address startled the redhead, and his friend tapped a code onto his legs. Nagato resumed his sleeping posture, now only pretending.

Yahiko sneezed. "Sheesh, this damn rain," _Ambush the ambush_ , was what the words meant. Red bangs covering his eyes provided no hindrance to the Rinnegan and Nagato exhaled for longer than a second. Yahiko secured their food closer to his frame, ignoring the icky chill it gave.

As one they leaped over the exploding tags hidden on the ground, Nagato flinging shurikens against a rock large enough to cover an adult.

A crouched ninja burst out and rushed towards them, stepping out of reach of Hoshi and Yahiko's combined taijutsu assault into a barrage of metal and paper shurikens, against which he substituted with a stone behind them.

Nagato covered their backs best as he against the man clad in battered black uniform and a brown vest – another Iwa shinobi with black hair and beady eye, taller and older than them all.

Their tired state caught up to them with a vengeance. A fist cannoned Nagato's face, sending him sprawling back. Ignoring their shock the Iwa shinobi moved towards Konan, kneeing her in the stomach while blocking Hoshi's punch.

Fury filled him as he tried to match the taller ninja but only received blow after blow, but he kept up the charge in case to prevent their attacker from forming handseals.

 _This whole business of kunai first, ask later is too damn annoying!_ His arm was caught, twisted and a foot in his back sent him face-first into the mud. A rock cut into his chin, a trail of blood joining the raindrops. Vaguely he heard someone yelling his name, and a kunai impaled the ground directly in front of his eyes.

A few metres away lay the Iwa ninja, raked earth leading to his feet, right in the line of a panting Nagato's outstretched palm. "Fucking brats!" he spoke for the first time, voice irritatingly nasal. "I'll kill you! Just you wait I'll-" Yahiko was on him in an instant, striking at his neck. He failed to rend their assailant unconscious and struck him again.

"Let's go. Curse this damn country!" Yahiko seethed and they carried on, Hoshi unravelling a portion of his training tape from his hand to wrap around his chin. They resumed their tense journey, going as fast as they could manage.

"Um, Hoshi?" Nagato called softly. The white-haired boy only flicked his eye to the redhead to show he had heard, before looking ahead.

The timid boy struggled with his words. He had always thought of the other four as a family, after he had gotten over the fear of losing them. After he had decided that his purpose to live was to protect them, for which another man had paid his life.

And Hoshi and Konan had been looking after them since he lost his parents, followed soon by Yahiko. Their sufferings and grief knit them together in a way he had never known possible. Hoshi called him his brother, confirming what he held in his heart seconds later fear stole the warmth from those words.

Hoshi had nearly died. Lead filled his stomach at the mere memory, the kunai heading towards that mop of white hair, that grim face of the would-be murderer had his desperation not activated his eyes –Rinnegan, was what Jiraya-sensei called it. Uncontrolled, but this time the target did not die.

Slender fingers, callused from holding a brush far too long flicked his chin, clacking his front teeth together, snapping him back to reality.

"Pay attention to the present, little brother." His was voice calm, as if nearly dying was an everyday occurrence and like the rain in the country they lived, nothing to be worried about, almost inconsequential to the world and people around him.

Then the words hit, and the feeling of elation was back. "Right, Hoshi-niisan..." Paid attention the present he did.

Cute was a gross understatement for Nagato's bright smile, making Hoshi feel warm in a land where it always

* * *

The traveller from another dimension was in his late teens, and thus always slept late, poring over his wooden tablet for Fuinjutsu or practicing chakra control when the moon did not impart sufficient light for calligraphy. It still boggled his mind that mere characters, although bound by some rules (he'd never live that even with the explosive tag down) were like magic.

His current running theory was that seals functioned like software, the limitations of which determined by the programmers' skill and effort. Even the risk of blowing up and not working could be juxtaposed with 'bugs' and incomplete versions of actual software. Besides the glaring difference that a branch of seals were also the _hardware,_ whereas others merely functioned to store items.

Hoshi pauses, the character for 'Magic' just short of two strokes and slowly dips his brush into the inkwell as he thinks. _One day, I'll link the summoning jutsu to a hollow sphere. And be the best there ever was._ Humming the first Pokémon theme, he carries on.

The night is cool as always, a gibbous moonlight glinting off the rain, his only company until someone else steps out to join him.

"What is it, Yahiko?" Hoshi wiped the board clean with a wet rag before flipping it to the drier side.

"Can't sleep, someone needs to keep watch in case Sensei flips his shit again." The boy sat down next to his friend, forearm resting on his shoulder as he focused on the blank board. "Still studying?"

"Yeah. And he won't start another exam, we passed this one." Yahiko got the feeling his friend was praying more than making a statement, but let it pass.

"We start studying ninjutsu for real tomorrow," Yahiko breathed deeply, trying to calm the butterflies in his stomach.

"A year and eight months since Jiraya-sensei has been looking after us," Hoshi began drawing a vague alchemy array (just because he was in the Narutoverse didn't mean he forgot all the other time he'd spent watching anime.)

Yahiko snorted. "He's ten times better than the ninja academies he told us about. Can you imagine six years to become a ninja?"

"We're not becoming ninja, just learning to fight like one." Hoshi pointed out, showing his pedantic streak.

"My bad," he gave a lazy smirk. "We'll still get those forehead protectors somehow."

"What's your plan after all this?" Hoshi dipped his brush and settled on sketching out helical shapes.

"Plan? Well...can I tell you a secret?"

"Go for it."

"I wish Jiraya-sensei never had to leave." His words were blunt, but his sad expression wouldn't look out of place on Naruto.

Hoshi let out a longsuffering sigh. "He must. He's no ordinary ninja, who knows how much scolding he's receiving for spending his time with us."

"I know but _still_ ," He ran a hand through his orange hair, exasperated. "At least he's a hundred times better than the shitty training program."

Hoshi dropped his brush. "There's a training program in Ame?"

"Yeah, but as far as I know, it's just random mercenaries tossed into a fight against Hanzo's ninja. If they live, they get a forehead protector. Most of the Ame ninja are just subordinates of people that have many things to guard in the village, than academy trained fighters who have ranks." Yahiko fired off an easy explanation Hoshi had not even known before.

As for how these people would unite and fight, Hoshi had a pretty good idea. Fear trumped respect when it came to obedience. And Hanzo brought freakin Sannin to their knees. Even if they were not as individually strong at this point in time as he'd known them to be, they were together; a team.

"What are your thoughts? Every time anyone mentions Hanzo, you get worried." Yahiko snapped him out of his thoughts. Emphatically perceptive, but somewhat blunt; that described Yahiko.

"He needs to be defeated. For us to take over Ame," Hoshi said simply, picking up his brush again. It was less dramatic a declaration about the fate of a nation than say, an oath to destroy Britannia, but he wasn't in the mood.

"Taking over a village, huh?" Yahiko shifted a bit, looking back towards the door behind which others slept, Jiraya snoring but otherwise giving no sign he was about pounce on them with a kunai.

Hoshi lightly snorted. He had tried to chastise Yahiko a few months ago when during Jiraya's lecture on war and Cycle of Hatred, Yahiko's outburst of people feeling pain and understanding each other did not include causing said pain by themselves. Vengeance wasn't involved but communication, and the latter was an issue in the world with the marvel that was the internet.

"We can do it, really." Hoshi turned to look Yahiko in the eye, who stared back, if a little unnerved at the mesmerising orbs.

When they had started to build their stamina, Jiraya told them to increase the reps of their exercises by one daily. Hoshi said he'd do it by five. Jiraya shook his head. And Hoshi collapsed daily, fulfilling his promise until Nagato told him to stop.

When they were learning to climb rocks with chakra, Konan had told Hoshi to hurry it up, to which he bit back that he never ruined her concentration when she was practicing origami with chakra, and Konan replied that would never happen to him since his level of control would never fold paper.

He had said he would do it somehow, and a week ago Hoshi had made a serviceable paper-plane, out of thicker paper, but did it nonetheless. And now he was saying he'll take over a village by defeating a man who kept the strongest ninjas from other nations at bay.

For a second he was tempted to believe it. But then he shook his head, "Yeah, right."

" _Fine._ But we'll still find peace."

"Now that, I can believe."


	5. Constellation

Lots of set-ups here, and some parts in the anime threw me off when I discovered the expanded story of Ame Orphans (I'm really a manga person). Enjoy! (Still no beta so forgive any errors)

* * *

"Gather around young tadpoles, it's time to test your affinities." Jiraya pulled out some very special paper and Hoshi did his best impression of a gobsmacked fish.

"What are these?" Yahiko asked when each of them held a paper, sitting around their empty table in the hideout.

"Chakra sensitive paper. You run your chakra through them, and they tell the nature of your chakra." Hoshi tuned out the explanation he already knew, wondering instead how on earth Jiraya had gotten his hands on these.

"Aren't these rare?" he blurted out, unable to withstand his curiosity.

Jiraya laughed. "You've never seen the amount of trees of Konoha! Getting this paper is easier than you think."

Hoshi gave him a look, clearly not buying the plausible explanation. Again, the jounin had the vibe of a parent trying very hard to not let his children figure out how hard it was for him to fulfil their wishes (an apt comparison).

And Jiraya did not want to say that the nations were gearing up for another war, which was hastening the training process, in turn allowing more and more younger ninja to get started on elemental jutsu and affinities and thus increasing the production of chakra paper.

A ripping sound emanated from Nagato's hands, drops of water fell on opposite sides of the table where Konan and Yahiko were seated and a heatless flame illuminated Hoshi's face for a small instance.

"Ho, fire! That's very rare around this country, and also my own affinity. The toads also taught me some good water jutsus, and I know someone who also has a wind affinity," his thoughts drifted towards a blond jounin, before he reached out and bonked his Fuinjutsu apprentice. "I know as much about this paper as you, questions are forbidden! Don't start on _how_ I know and _why_."

"I wasn't going to! Why did you hit me?" That got another harsh bonk on the head.

"I said no questions! Read between the lines as a shinobi should!"

"Sensei, can what will you teach us first?" Nagato cut in, careful to not smile, muscles tense to counter should his teacher target him. Not asking questions hadn't been specified to Hoshi after all.

"With the progress you've made so far, a C-rank technique for each. All you'll need is your imagination with the correct nature." The Sannin said and surprised all of them. With how much he'd grinded the basics into their growing bodies, they thought they'd begin with D-ranks. Yahiko closed his mouth shut, obviously about protest the notion before realizing his teacher hadn't proposed it in the first place.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Hoshi smirked, getting up. He barely blocked Jiraya's fist, bones jarring within his arms as he crossed them in haste.

"Did I say you could ask questions?!"

"I'm just glad he's move on from me." Yahiko tried to whistle in nonchalance (but failed).

"I'm not so sure about that, since he pays less attention to you now." Konan bumped her shoulder against his.

"You think I'm jealous?" he asked, and then noticed his mistake when Jiraya slapped him upside the head. "You did that on purpose!" he hissed at her. The girl nodded proudly.

"The start of a beautiful relationship..." Hoshi spoke only to himself, but the man he was watching like a hawk twitched, as if he had heard.

 _He probably did._ Hoshi concluded.

* * *

Jiraya watched his little prodigies as they weaved their fingers through the handseals for their respective jutsus until it became second nature.

"Futon: Reppusho ( _Gale Palm_ )!"

"Suiton: Mizurappa ( _Water Wave_ )!"

Nagato's clapped hands stirred wind considerable to deflect a few shurikens Jiraya threw at him all of a sudden, whilst Konan exhaled a mouthful of water in a small stream, Yahiko only sputtering and causing water to burst past his pursed lips prematurely.

"Katon: Gokakyu no-" Hoshi pushed out his stomach and bent his knees, preparing his muscles from his core to the neck for exhalation, stirring the chakra within him, like waves rising, rushing to meet the shore and then, all at once, crashing, "-jutsu!"

The fireball illuminated the grey and cloudy landscape, burning strong despite the rain for six seconds, before Hoshi cut it off. Grinning widely at he began to walk towards them, but fell face-first after the first step.

"Niisan!" "Hoshi!" Jiraya waved the other three off and approached the downed student himself.

"I can't decide if you're a genius or an idiot," The tall man simply stood as the boy tried to right himself up. There were no burns marks on around his lips or cheeks, signifying the execution itself had been good.

"Lend thee a hand, oh master mine!" Hoshi grimaced as he finally stood up. The jutsu took _something_ out of him, making him feel tired in a way unlike before. Like he had skipped a meal, instead of exerting the energy stored in his body instead.

"You know samurai-speak?" Jiraya kept his expression soft, even as he crossed in arms in deep thought. Hoshi blanched, confirming his slip-up into the archaic form of the language. There were samurais still lived, and so did their style of speaking, apparently. "You're not from Ame, are you?"

Judging by the look in his eyes, it wasn't really a question. "Yes." Hoshi confirmed; a lie of omission if Jiraya took him to be from...whatever the land of samurai was. "Don't ask where." He added quickly.

Jiraya said nothing, staring into the sky.

"Why did you teach me Fuinjutsu?" Hoshi asked as he went through handseals for the famous fire technique of Konoha.

"Don't let it get to your head, but you're writing is impeccable." Jiraya replied absently. Hoshi bit his cheeks, wanting to call bullshit. Many times throughout his lessons he had the impression the Toad Sage had been looking to teach someone Fuinjutsu specifically, even though he didn't yet call himself a seal master.

 _Snake, Ram, Monkey, Boar, Horse- Tch!_ His index fingers misaligned and he began over. Thoughts continuously distracted him, going back to Fuinjutsu lessons. Every time he would exceed Jiraya's expectations, it felt the Sannin was hoping for him to do so. Which lead to only one thought for Hoshi, limited as his knowledge was.

The prophecy of the Elder regarding a student of Jiraya...which was something the man would never tell him. Not in a million years. Frustrated, Hoshi gathered his chakra once more – his control slipping a bit as it took greater tightening of muscles of gather it – and for the heck of it aborted the attempt to go through his seals again but the teacher finally seemed to take notice of the student and covered his hands his own.

"Don't push any further for now." Hoshi returned Jiraya's smile with a scowl.

"I'll try again after I eat something."

"Then go get us lunch from the village, and some sake too."

"They won't-" Hoshi opened his mouth but then closed it. He'd seen some kid buy a cigarette after saying his father asked for it from a shopkeeper in one of the neater Ame districts. No one asked for ID or intentions, just money. "Right," he scowled.

The Toad Sage had recently forbidden the other three from wandering to the village until they learned to suppress their developing chakra signatures. On the other hand, the white-haired boy had no noticeable signature until he used chakra, another skill way beyond his level, not that he knew was inspiration for ANBU everywhere.

For Hoshi it meant sneaking around to not run into anyone he knew, since his method of releasing chakra in bursts made his Transformation Jutsu seem like the image of a stuttering projector. Voicing no further complaint he strolled back to hideout to change into his less conspicuous yukata (not worn usually because someone always pointed out to not don in the fashion of a corpse).

* * *

Jiraya watched his student go after a performance that would have made an Uchiha proud. His other students also made progress in strides when compared to the average ninja, but there was always something off about that kid.

Yahiko was more mature, and although the type to throw a tantrum his rush was understandable. He had a straightforward personality, with a genuine drive behind his actions that rose and fell as per the laws of human nature. The typical 'try until he gets it' kind of boy, and the one responsible for buggering Jiraya into extra tips besides whatever the jounin told them to focus on.

Konan was more aware of herself, because she was a girl in the world they lived in. A measure of chakra control which Jiraya knew would become thorn for their enemies when it flowered into the rose it was to be. But she also had her shortcomings and turned to her teacher for guidance.

Nagato was the least vocal, but the most emphatic, the one who understood the subtle undercurrents between the team, and clearly adored by them all as the 'innocent one', the one all his friends would want to protect from Life (quite the opposite of Jiraya, who was clearly not innocent and would have been pushed off the peak of Mount Myoboku by one particular member could she have her way). Also the one who was likely the Child of Prophecy.

And then there was Hoshi, with a faraway look in his eyes whenever he trained. His most dangerous student. Physically, even Konan would have an advantage over him did he not near opt for a taijutsu specialization. But it was his mind which was his forte, asking questions about Fuinjutsu that he had not pondered until years later, like whether handseals could be transcribed into a script.

Even more than his mind, it was his instincts which made him the greatest threat on the team. Every blow, every strike, which might seem impractical and idiotic was only so because of his tendency to reach into the requirements of incapacitating or finishing his opponent. _Without a drop of Killing Intent._

Except for Yahiko, all of them were budding sensors, with different strengths. Konan had range, Nagato, once he knew what to look for could identify and make deductions about what she was sensing (even to the nature of his clones or jutsus he used!) and Hoshi detected genjutsu as if he had a Bloodline Limit for sensing Yin chakra.

Looking over at the other three, Jiraya held back a sigh. Maybe Hoshi couldn't see it, but when you looked at it from an outside perspective; something was clearly not right about him.

* * *

"Sensei, can I follow Hoshi?" Konan asked with slight apprehension, wondering if she was doing a good job of concealing her chakra. Her teacher stared at her impassively, but she was long acclimated to his mental tests, his eyes detecting the hidden query and asking that back at her.

 _Do_ you _think you're ready?_

Konan simply nodded when the Jiraya said nothing and walked past him.

He did not stop her.

* * *

In the beginning, Konan had not thought much of it. They were just clothes after all, even if she found it wrong that Hoshi kept dressing in ninja attire he had stolen off a dead body. She wished he wear the same attire as the rest of them, but when he did he wore it differently. It defeated the purpose of wearing matching clothes, like a team...or dare she say it, family.

And then it seemed like he was not going to be able to use chakra, but he found a way, even if Jiraya-sensei had not seen anyone use chakra like him before (except in certain techniques). The blue-haired girl thought her friend would stop his excessive taijutsu training after the discovery, but he didn't relent and pushed himself further.

Konan had asked him directly why, to which he had just smiled at her, in a sad way her mother did when a question was asked of her and she didn't want to lie, so she just smiled in return.

It had pissed her off, initially. She thought back to the questions Hoshi asked people when they wandered the streets with no purpose in life but to survive, and how many of those were linked to some of Jiraya-sensei's lessons.

Population. Area. Diet. Professions. Stuff she hadn't heard anything about, like economy, ideology, per capita income, schooling systems, governance. Whenever their teacher had talked about those, Hoshi pretended to be oblivious, like he was a child. But whenever it was just her with Nagato and Yahiko, he acted very much like an adult.

Today, she wanted to see how he acted like when he was alone. He had her beat when it came to taijutsu and now ninjutsu, but when it came to chakra control and sensing, Konan was the best in their crew.

Keeping her breathing even, she leapt from rock to rock; trying to keep as Hoshi periodically sprinted from place to place, making even an errand into training. At one she slipped and nearly shouted at him, but bit her lip soldiered on.

Once in the city, he walked casually, keeping enough space around people to not bump into anyone, fiddling with the movement of his right arm from time to time. He still hid a kunai there, a fact she wasn't aware of.

The girl trailed the boy with precision, taking note of the shopkeepers he interacted with, the way his shoulder twitched when a pickpocket they knew about walked by him, probably holding back a punch, how he haggled about prices even when the money he had to have on him would have been enough, his shift in posture when a pretty woman several years older than him walked by.

Konan blinked. That was unexpected. She had spent enough time around Yahiko and Nagato to know how boys acted around pretty women, but Hoshi's behaviour was...a bit like Sensei's.

Like he actually would take her out for a cup of tea and grilled fish, if the combination of a blush and the focus of his eyes was any indication. For the Sun's sake, someone even bumped into him from behind after Jiraya-sensei's lessons on vigilance!

 _Weird...but isn't this blackmail material?_ Konan nearly giggled, but that would have given her away from behind a drain pipe.

After the unsuspecting boy had made all his purchases, he headed towards a part of the village they had never been to. And for good reason, if the pieces red cloth tied to grills behind the windows of the buildings there were any indication.

Konan felt her blood _boil_.

Hoshi detected the killing intent and barely slipped into the state of mind of a 'lost but not quite lost' teenager when a kunai pricked into his throat and a familiar voice, in a tone he had never heard before snarled, " _What the hell are you doing here?"_

"Uh, this is, uh, not what you think." Hoshi spluttered, even as the kunai dug into his skin and red drop slid into the crevice between his collarbones.

"Then so tell me, or I will find myself short one friend!" Kunai still pricking his neck, Hoshi swallowed precariously, before his expression changed to neutral, and then a small smirk. "Gathering information."

Konan swore and Hoshi started to sweat. "Look, just you being here can make it a mess, but for now, follow me and don't say much."

"Why?"

"Don't you trust me?"

And that's what it was all about. They all had their secrets, only he had more. And she wanted to know, but he never let down this wall between them.

"I don't get why you're always doing this." She averted her eyes as she removed the kunai. The boy smiled faintly, noticing her unable to apologize.

 _To make sure the worst that has yet to come doesn't._ He wanted to say, but couldn't. Kishimoto might have written the fading patches of a story, but this was their reality. A quick moment to seal abscond everything in a decrepit, soaked alley to seal groceries into a scroll besides some sake, and they were good to go.

"For an offering, although no doubt this will barely count as a gift. That's when our age comes into advantage," Hoshi explained. They walked with caution, taking care to avoid some leering men in wearing straw hats and tattered cloaks, leaning against a rock bench. The streets were clear of rubble, but cigarette packaging and empty bottles of alcohol lay squashed in corners, tobacco butts and paper littered over grills that covered gutters for continuous rain.

Hoshi led her to a building that neither too shabby, nor too posh. Taking a deep breath he pushed the wooden door, rusted hinges and painted a bright green, in. Konan followed, suppressing a frown.

"Welcome- girls, what are you here for?" A girl approached them, around sixteen or seventeen, he complexion pale and dusted with pink make-up. He braided brown hair fell to her mustard sash, which tied her green kimono together.

Another woman, older with short hair framing the side of her face and reaching above her collar of an identical outfit walked up behind her, red stained lips pursing when her eyes ran over the two children. She cocked her head, showing a lone tear-drop earring of cheap, green glass.

"Ahem," Hoshi ground out in his lowest register and could feel Konan try not to smile, "Hello." He bowed, which was prompted his companion to do so as well, and the older girls returned the gesture.

"I'm Misaki, and this is Hana." The one with the longer hair introduced, fluttering her eyes so much Konan thought the powder would dust off her face and fall.

"Aren't you a bit young to be here, _boy?_ " Hana asked, bending to Hoshi's eye level, giving a view of her kimono very inappropriate for any boy Hoshi's age. Predictably, he blood rushed to his cheeks.

 _Yep, totally into older women._ Konan deadpanned internally.

"You speak as if I'm the youngest person to ever come here." This got a polite laugh, hidden behind hands which showed unpolished yet pink nails.

"As a customer, surely. Unless...?" Her eyes trailed to Konan, who glared back balefully, silently stepping on the foot of the boy who had brought them here.

Said boy seemed to remember the sake he was holding, a bottle with a slightly chipped mouth, and offered it to Misaki, who took with grace and smiled back politely, curiosity clear in her eyes.

"I'll get Aunty shortly, honoured guest." She bowed slightly and sashayed to the back, up a staircase connected to the walls.

Hoshi straightened his neck and walked into one of the many booths on either side of the room, covered by grey curtains. Konan lost her opportunity to ask him any questions when the other girl –Hana, her name was- slid into the opposite side of the table, sitting down on one of the mangy cushions with a fluid motion.

"What brings you here, honoured guest?" She was looking at the boy in a new light, wondering where he had gotten the secret way of delivering the sake to request for the owner of this place, besides an outright demand.

"Can you stop with the honoured guest, Hana-neesan? Call me Hoshi."

"Hoshi-sama," Her lips quirked, showing her mirth at the still formal address.

"No sama!"

"Hoshi-chan?"

"Yes, that's fine." Konan cut in. She almost felt bad the betrayed look her friend sent her, before remembering his sheepish demeanour and obvious glances at the pretty lady across them made him seem unprofessional. Amateurish, compared to the person who she had held at kunai-point...

"What? No!"

"Hoshi-chan it shall be then."

"Hana-neesan!" Hoshi folded his arms. "Bully."

"How cute of you," She reached out and patted his head, before withdrawing her hand along with his long bangs, easily guiding his bangs towards herself with ease. "And such soft hair."

"You can have it if you want," he shrugged, knowing that long hair was something that actually held monetary value. "For a woman as pretty as you, I wouldn't mind." A weak riposte, but the attempt earned a laugh nonetheless.

"And what do you do?" Hana turned to Konan.

"We live with our old man and play hopscotch...sometimes we visit the market." A slight thrill ran through her body when she made up her lie on the spot, and then implied to do an activity that was often frowned upon, hoping to form a small connection with a woman who partook in activities also often frowned upon by their society.

One of the lessons Jiraya-sensei had given them was that bad habits and involvement in hobbies or activities that others were quick to judge had a tendency of forming connections between people who shared such pastimes.

"Visit? Market?" She tilted her head coyly. "The place where people can buy things?"

"People can indeed buy things at the market." If only she had some tea to sip, the exchange would be just like ones Sensei told them about during his travels, a side-project of setting up an information network. Actually, he'd be clinking cups of sake but they were too young for that...they were also too young to enter a _brothel_ , she suddenly remembered.

There was a slight knock outside the booth and then Misaki stepped in, a slightly disappointed expression on her face. "I'm sorry, but Aunty's health is not good nowadays, and her vision is fading. She cannot see anyone."

"What's her illness?"

"It's a common thing, in our lives, to be cursed by spirits." Misaki shook her head sadly and Hana began to frown. "Sorry to trouble you, honoured guest."

Hoshi leaned forward on the table, fingers a steeple beneath his chin. "Did a man called Ken come here recently? He's got brown hair with a balding spot?"

Both the older women were startled at the description, and immediately on guard. "I think it's time for you to leave, Hoshi-chan." Hana stood up.

Konan nearly followed, but noticing her friend not moving, only leaning back to maintain eye contact, stayed seated. Who was Ken, and how did the white-haired boy know him? Why did he cause such a reaction? It took effort to stay her questions.

"Please, are you not curious on why we entered into your inn?" Hoshi tried, but the young women did not reply. "Perhaps you might be interested in ways to rid yourselves of the wrath of spirits?" _Spirits probably called STDs,_ Hoshi thought to himself sardonically.

"Why are you here?" Misaki asked, her face glacial.

"It is not Aunty who has been cursed, but the curse is for whoever comes into contact with the man known as Ken," he paused to withdraw a small brown pouch from his sleeve, "This will help."

Hana unfastened the strings to peer inside and her face lit up, torn between incredulity and happiness. "Why do you have this?"

"The herbs go by goldenseal and cat's claw; if you need more, go to the old man with no teeth behind the red-bean bun shop run by the lady with three cats. Let's leave," he nudged Konan and they were up and about.

Before exiting, he turned one last time. "I hope next time I'll be able to see Aunty. Later, Hana-neesan, Misaki-neesan." And they did not wait for any response, stepping out. By the time the girls remembered to thank the children and followed them out, they were gone.

* * *

They sprinted back towards home, sandals only touching the ground to boost their leaps as they jumped from rock to rock.

"The person who bumped into you in the market handed you the herbs." Konan broke the silence.

"Correct." Hoshi replied. That was the most obvious deduction.

"You make money on your own and do not tell us." Jiraya would _know_ if he ever drunk on his own or went to places with his money, ergo, he had to have sources he did not tell anyone about if he could buy and get rid of a bottle of sake without his team knowing.

"Correct."

"You have medical knowledge, to know which leaves have uses besides being crumpled and smoked by a crazy man." They weren't taught about medicinal herbs.

A wry smile. "Correct."

"You're honest with your reactions, but not above using them to your advantage." She rolled in the air and launched herself forward with more chakra to cross over a slippery, glistening patch of rock.

"Correct."

"Your main purpose was to not see the owner, but the girls who worked there themselves."

"Correct."

She stopped then, and he landed next to her. They stared at each other in complete silence, before it was broken by Konan, again.

"Why?"

"Ken is a shop-owner from the Ame's Central. 'Aunty' is a woman who is rumoured to be the best-looking mistress in all of the red-cloth districts. The guy got saddled with a girl he could not stand the sight of, so he ventured out of the little bubble built to keep the people who matter hoity-toity under Hanzo's administration. I-"

"-Have probably spent a lot of time around the outer districts, more freely when once you had an excuse to be alone after Jiraya-sensei took us in, but still have not made any progress regarding Central. Why go in there, when someone suited to your needs ventures out?"

Hoshi gaped, not expected her to connect the threads so quickly. Konan smiled back innocently. "What?"

"Well, any questions you want to ask?"

"Any questions? Can I really ask any?"

Standing at her full height, she was an inch or so taller than the boy, barely an intimidating figure. He tried to shrug, to appear unconcerned but found the motions awkward.

"I trust you." He managed.

"Why are you doing all this?"

"To protect you guys."

Konan paused, the words not making any sense, but held on the budding anger within her. "You think we need your protection?"

"The Sannin couldn't defeat Hanzo. Do you think we can take him on?"

Her blood froze within her veins.

"You want to fight Hanzo?!" Konan didn't quite scream.

"There are more ways to fight a person than outright battling them!" Hoshi retorted.

"Are you crazy? What are you trying to do, rule over Ame?"

"No! I mean yes- but not in that sense!"

She had a distinct feeling she ought to be hauling him to Sensei this instant. Instead she pushed forward in this moment he was mentally flustered.

"How many contacts do you have?"

"Just two, and the one who will be the third you met today."

"This Aunty?"

"No, we met Hana-neesan today."

Konan took a single second to think. "She recognized the herbs without you telling her."

"Exactly. She's known to give massages that really soothe the muscles unlike any other. And did you notice Misaki's nails?"

"She wore no nail polish, but they were quite pink. Were they abnormal?" Hoshi shook his head slowly.

"The opposite. They were healthy, which implies not just a rich diet, but a balanced one. Given Aunty's rumoured beauty, she's bound to have connections, which is what interests me as well. The one providing the knowledge of what to get and acquiring said materials is what I want to know, and if I can just happen to help her out in a season where trade is slowing down to another war coming up, maybe she might just return the favour."

Konan was about to ask if he even knew what Aunty's name was when something along the last sentences struck with the force of a water-bullet jutsu. "There's a war coming up?" She almost whispered.

Hoshi nodded, although it was something he had prior knowledge of deduced in reverse. Jiraya had spent nearly two years out of the three he had with them, and given his slight changes in demeanour he caught once in a blue moon, trials were on the horizon.

Thankfully, Ame would opt out and adopt a policy of isolation. Probably, that's what the word on the street was, but then again the people who spoke words on the street thought their opinions were gospel, and did not hesitate to embellish and bolster their tales with hot air just make sure they had the most outstanding story to tell their friends who also competed for the same wish.

"We'll be okay. We'll just train extra-hard and survive. This war is not ours to fight." He reminded her gently, when the girl asked no further questions. "I've told you because I trust you, if you want others to know then I will tell them as well." He didn't want to, but if they were thinking the same things as what Konan thought when she decided to shadow him, he felt like quite the asshole.

They wanted to trust him, but he was making it difficult. When he was around them he was training, when they were relaxing he was revising lectures of Fuinjutsu, when it came to meals he was already too exhausted to engage in any worthwhile discussion, participation less like a friend and attending more like an observer.

Shaking his head, he looked at the cloudy sky. "I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you."

Konan snapped out her thoughts, registering what he'd said and his forlorn posture. Smirking, she said, "I'm still telling Jiraya-sensei you entered a brothel."

It was fun to run back full tilt and prevent any further discussion.

* * *

It would have been so easy, Orochimaru wondered as he turned away from the male stumbling into his apartment in one of Konoha's civillian blocks. The disgusting man was so drunk that he actually pissed outside the door. What kind of idiot urinated on his own doorstep before taking out his keys and stepping inside? From his place right behind him, hidden by a genjutsu, the Sannin wrinkled his nose.

The vermin was a rapist. Again, it was so easy to make excuses to acquire a living specimen for his foray into the observation of a living, breathing human body. To actually see, instead of using chakra and a body chart derived from anatomical study of cutting up dead bodies to guess.

The man would not survive without continuous care throughout the experiment, something he wasn't entitled to at all. Yet for the love of snakes, the Uchiha that couldn't give a shit about craftsmen or workers who got injured on the job, but would patch up a criminal in order to make him stand trial in court.

Not that anyone would miss this man, and some might in fact toast to his absence over a cup of sake. Such was his miserable attitude. Too easy...if he disappeared, even died, no one would look into it much. He was no medic-nin, and the pain might even be considered punishment for his heinous crime.

 _Can you face the prospect of death yourself, to decide it for others?_ A tiny voice spoke in the recesses of his mind, echoing hauntingly. Orochimaru frowned openly. It sounded like an orphan he had met years ago; that Hoshi boy.

He didn't have enough evidence the police would require, nor was he a witness to the man's crime, neither would the woman foolishly go them herself, believing it was her fault to the contrived way civilian masses thought. But it wouldn't do to let scum who ruined a life wander freely, and wake up without ever remembering his crimes clearly.

Orochimaru wasn't someone who was known to brandish the Will of Fire, and maybe it was a good thing, considering how many of the people they fought to protect were men like this creature, slumped against a wall without even bothering to close his door behind him.

Turning away, he cast a vicious genjutsu to make sure the rapist would remember the night just as horrifically as his victim, and slunk into the darkness of the night, back to another sleepless night at Konoha Research and Development.

* * *

Yeah, I'll develop the Sannin in this fic as well. Review?


	6. Cassiopeia

Sorry for such a late update, Life and health got me down. This chapter is shorter, only because I wanted to upload sooner and also because it sets subplots that I don't want to be glossed over by changing many so many plot gears in one chapter. Enjoy, and thanks for your reviews and follows. From my (admittedly quite weak) heart :P

EDIT: some sentences cut off where they appeared fine in MS word. As for hitting 64+ follows with this chapter, I've decided to add a (very small) omake at the end.

* * *

It was in a place that had long forgotten what it looked like. There was the sea in the west, trees to the east, rocks to the north and the expansive beach to the south. It was an environment to suit every battalion, of every village whose ninja had been present.

What mattered was that now it belonged to Fire Country.

The signs were still visible upon it, as if the elements themselves, the earth, the water, and scorched rocks and broken weapons laying a monument. It did not look like a battle had taken place, but a witness to a calamity; the Wrath of God.

There had been one ninja, and four shadow clones, each displaying a mastery of the elements of which an elite ninja would master two at most, perhaps three, but never attempt all five.

He donned black armour and a symbol of a leaf. He fought with hand and steel in ways known and ways not known. He called forth howling flames, the earth exploded to do his bidding, the waves swept themselves aside at with mere changes in the posture of his hands, unseen winds of blade passed by him and seared through his opposition.

The jutsus stopped and they tried to engage him, all under different banners uniting against the greatest threat on the battlefield and his shadow clones, engaging with hand and steel.

Many recalled the fight to be an army against one man who could rival it. But it had been the case of a more than a dozen jounin of various specialties that had faced off against the Sandaime and his shadow clones – fighting beyond any limit to not receive a single blow up till that point.

There had been kunais, swords, chains and more levelled against him. None managed to prevent him from unsealing his staff.

It wasn't unheard of to be proficient in various taijutsu styles, wield and confront a plethora of weapons. But for the same man who held himself a master of all ninjutsu? One so hard to ensnare in genjutsu, but also capable of returning fire against fi

One who had won against all odds.

And now the very man, called as a god of killers glanced wearily towards the carved faces at the horizon of his village, felt thrice his age.

Iwa had mobilized its borders, forcing Konoha to do likewise. Ambassadors had both villages had managed a compromise, but it was naught when Onoki refused to believe Hiruzen to be plotting _something_ , and that years after he'd earned his title as a deity, the hearsay among the village of him looking for someone to take over as the fourth Hokage was proof of him weakening from the after-effects of a close call (which were far too many to in his life).

That he might be interested in a person less hardened and tutored by war to rule over a village for its better, economic and social prosperity was deemed unbelievable.

It was ridiculous paradox really. He was being considered weak enough to attack, but not weak enough to retire. Hiruzen considered neither to be true, of course. The causes of war had always been there, but its new start must fall upon the heads of Onoki and himself.

The Sandaime thought back to the citizens that actually lived alongside the borders and were neighbours, friends with their so-called enemies.

He sighed.

The longer he lived, the more Fate seemed undefeatable.

* * *

The difference between a shadow clone and an elemental clone, widely known, was the chakra cost. Another was that elemental clones obeyed, but shadow clones thought on their own. Lesser known subtleties included that once a shadow clone's high chakra cost had been paid, it consumed no more chakra, but if dispelled returned whatever chakra it hadn't burned through.

What a blessing it was that pain didn't channel back along with memories of the clone. Jiraya nearly winced at the barrage led by Yahiko, scattering kunai and shuriken before Nagato used a wind jutsu to guide the steal with a tornado that took his clones a combination of jumps and substitutions to dodge. Some of the shurikens were of paper but coloured black, along with being oiled.

Hoshi's follow-up fireball didn't come close enough to singe the clone but the flashy embers as Konan's secret shurikens caught fire were a distraction enough for Nagato to use Shinra Tensei ( _Almighty Push_ ) in the nick of time to batter the Sannin without warning.

Nagato knew that the greatest advantage of this particular technique was not its power or quicker usage as his skill increased, but its stealth. Other elemental jutsus gave auditory warnings, but with Hoshi and Konan using their chakra in widespread combo to mask his own spike when he used his Rinnegan, it could technically be a one-hit kill.

Technically; There was no sign of the clone dispelling.

A fist between his shoulder blades knocked the wind out of the redhead. Not one for melee combat, he immediately switched with Yahiko assaulted the jounin with a water bullet, putting all the power he could behind it. (Once, the Toad Sage had simply swatted away that jutsu; he pitied that his clone didn't dare to anymore).

The clone gave one cursory glance to his opponents, before jumping atop the river nearby. It was pouring, and the flow was turbulent. Jiraya was not surprised when his students followed without hesitation, planting themselves along the flow with confidence.

Except a certain white-haired boy, who ruined the moment by falling beneath the waves.

Jiraya pinched the bridge of his nose.

The clone didn't have time to laugh at such a juvenile failure as the other three rushed him at once, which was a bit strange considering at least one stayed behind for long range attacks...until Hoshi came up.

The jounin from Konoha could not prevent his jaw from falling as his student shot up with a form _very_ familiar to the opening of the Omote Renge ( _Primary Lotus_ ).

But the kick was weak and slow, unable to dispel the clone and barely causing him to be lifted. The real shock came when the white-haired boy spun mid-air and released a jet of fire from his incoming fist directly onto the clone's torso.

The finishing blow came from lances of water conjured by Yahiko, a smug look on his face as the clone dispelled. Setting aside a level of skill he hadn't seen in the headstrong boy, Jiraya stared only at Hoshi. Whatever speech he had prepared for his bright students vanished from his mind, his mind reeling as if Orochimaru had suddenly proclaimed that toads were his favourite animal.

"H-how? How can you create fire jutsu without using your breath?" The Toad Sage muttered. It was supposed to be impossible. It was unheard of, to create flames without exhaling. (The traveller from another world would call it _firebending_ ).

When Hoshi began to comeback with burns on his hands, trying hard to hide them underneath his training bandages, he'd thought he was experimenting, but deemed him sensible enough. He was the most careful with his element, the most destructive, after all.

Biting back any incredulous remarks when he saw the proud smile faltering on the prodigy's face, Jiraya grinned back.

"How'd you do it?"

"You mean... _this_?" The other orphans sighed as their friend punched upwards and sent a blast of fire towards the sky. Jiraya tsk'ed, but let him have his moment that everyone else had become accustomed to behind his back.

"It was hard," Hoshi nodded cupped his chin, voice switching to a lower register. "It required me to mould chakra externally, which was hard to hold and even harder to maintain for me." He walked closer to his teacher and his team followed, not having heard the mechanics behind his new technique.

"It has three steps after releasing your chakra," the boy spoke normally now, to the relief of his audience. He held out his hand, palm open.

"First, rotate it to make it dense!" Hoshi felt the strain on his tired tenketsu as the chakra became marginally visible, feather-thin tendrils flickering above his palm as drops of rain fell onto his hand. "Notice that the rotation is in just one direction, which will help us in step three."

 _For the love of cats, please don't let Minato have created the Rasengan already._

If anyone looked closely, they would see that the chakra in Hoshi's hand spun in a loose sphere with the majority of it spinning in a ring at its equator. The ring would pulse than slow down its rotation, in a manner Hoshi self-termed as the blender-effect, since it was very akin to the movement of the blades of a blender when someone turned it on and off, the rotation hovering in-between two speeds.

"The second step requ- requires common sense." Hoshi winced as he brought up his hand to shoulder height. "In order to not get the fire back into your face, it's important to squeeze the chakra so that it ignites as far from your hand as possible."

The sphere in his hand began to unwind from the top while it tightened at the bottom, a few centimetres separating the blue spiritual energy from his flesh. The white-haired boy breathed deeply, a drop of sweat sliding down his nose.

"Ho!" Jiraya exclaimed. "I see that this principle is the same as any other fire technique." Successfully stealing the attention from his student that had just outshone him, the Toad Sage grinned at his charges.

"While many users coat their mouths and throats with chakra to prevent damage in case of making a mistake, an efficient user knows that chakra doesn't turn into fire until leaves the mouth; it takes a while to notice only your face feels hot but your mouth, from you think the fire is coming from, does not." The jounin explained pithily.

"And the last and hardest part," Hoshi gritted his teeth, but continued, "is conversion to nature!"

Fire bloomed from the palm he thrust forward, casting orange shades on his weary but triumphant smile and surroundings.

"What if someone blows that back into your face?" Jiraya rested his knuckles against his chin, seeing the execution of the technique.

"Oh, Nagato tried that," Konan piped up. "Because this fire uses chakra as fuel, once Hoshi cuts his supply off the fire doesn't burn." The girl said with a look of innocence, as if they weren't just writing another branch of fire techniques.

Hoshi would have liked to point out that since external chakra scattered when he wasn't compressing and that the fire went out like a light (which was downright eerie, one moment it's there and then not),so fast that it could have been a dying spark from a firework that wouldn't hurt an ant if it fell on it, but Jiraya had enough suspicion on his face.

 _Stupid war-torn world that has no primary science education or pet shelters for cats_.

"I see." Their teacher pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he smiled. A smile that dismissed the pride they were all feeling and replaced it with a clenching in their chest. "You've all grown up wonderfully, huh?"

"Sensei," Yahiko choked out.

"Don't cry Yahiko, you don't want to be seen as a cry baby now, do you?" spoke the Sannin. Turning, he began to address them all.

"Konan, you're a bound to bloom into a magnificent flower. Let's meet again when you're older, hmm?" A wink; replied with a sad smile.

"Nagato, don't you think you've all matured? Well, not quite all...right Hoshi?" Giving them one look, he turned around.

"Sensei, can I ask one last question before you go?" The boy raised his hand, recovering from the sudden farewell with an air of maturity that surprised Jiraya even in these final moments.

"What is it?" Jiraya masked his worries behind a sigh. What did he want to know? When he'd be back? Where was it that he was going? A last tip about Fuinjutsu? He had run his chakra network to hell and back to increase his reserves for the art.

Hoshi breathed deeply, composing, failing and then retrying, before asking,

"Where do babies come from?"

.

.

.

' _Son of A_ BITCH _.'_

* * *

"You had to insufferable to the last, didn't you?" Yahiko asked as they ran back to their hideout.

"Considering some of the stuff we've been put through, I don't mind it much." Konan replied evenly.

"Why do I feel like you wanted to ask him something else, Niisan?" Nagato mused.

"Well, you know me." Hoshi gave no actual answer. "Let's get something to eat, I'm tired." _And I have a feeling lunch will have a sombre atmosphere; better get that out of the way quickly._

* * *

It was foolish, to not act upon his ambitions that would eventually lead to the betterment of all shinobi. What was also more foolish was going behind Sarutobi-sensei's back, but Orochimaru knew there was no other way.

He might know what lurked at night in Konoha's shadows, but to claim he was familiar with them would a statement that could lead to his undoing.

The snake summoner stood on the topmost corridor of the Hokage tower, his noiseless steps making their way towards the opposite of the end from the village leader's office.

 _It is always darkest beneath the lamp, or so they say,_ thought Orochimaru as he knocked on the door. Not too loudly, nor too softly.

There was no noise besides the creaking hinges when the door opened. He entered.

"Orochimaru." Shimura Danzo spoke, clad in his black and blue uniform from behind his desk, moonlight spilling and homely, potted plants near the window casting interesting silhouettes in an office everyone would hesitate to think belonged to the commander of Konoha's ANBU.

The interior was friendly, but expensive enough to cause one to think twice before poking their nose in. Orochimaru bowed respectfully, before speaking. You had to pitch these delicately, while being blunt.

"I have a request, regarding some research projects. It would benefit Konoha's shinobi immensely."

"Along what lines?" asked Danzo.

"Anywhere, from healing remedies and surgeries which do not require chakra to perform to even psychological aspects; some medical ninja believe that damaged organs can be replaced with healthy ones, but has not attempted."

" _Some_ medical ninja?" Danzo's eyes glinted with interest.

"Ones I consider close." Orochimaru gave a tiny smirk to confirm that he was referring to the person the ANBU commander was thinking of.

"What else are you 'reasonably certain' of, that you're here in my office?"

Orochimaru relaxed a fraction internally. Time to answer the man's another unspoken question, namely, what was is in it for him. "In my last campaigns I came across some substances that soothe the mind, and stopper emotions temporarily without hampering fieldwork. I can perform extensive research on those for our use."

"...I see. And you require human subjects?" Danzo cut straight to the point.

"I will, of course, not deny any probes you would want to conduct or any observers you will want to place during the experiments."

Silence reigned for a while, the ANBU commander giving neither approval nor disproval.

"Anything else?" Danzo asked, signalling the conversation was over. The snake Sannin searched his thoughts for anything else, but it was all far too soon to suggest.

"Nothing else." The sannin waited, for any order or permission to leave, hoping he had garnered enough interest from the man to personally give further instructions.

"Dismissed."

As he left, the sharp jounin noticed the shadows themselves moving to close the door.

 _Kukuku...I see the so-called lazy ninjas haven't been slacking._

* * *

Hoshi went through the day as normally as he could, but failed to realize how much he missed Jiraya until night came and he sat down to practice Fuinjutsu.

Wondering where his teacher had reached, and missing him more than he would ever admit Hoshi replayed his last lessons about the world he had travelled.

Much the ninja villages were well-versed in Japanese, although the nations themselves had many of them. Fuinjutsu worked only with Kanji, and that system had united intellectuals who yearned to be shinobi, although the language originated from the Land of Whirlpools, where legend said sealing began.

" _In a country far away, surrounded by water on all sides, the language they spoke came and knit together scattered tribes of shinobi, who settled in what became different nations, looked different from each other, ate different foods, wore different clothes, but spoke the same language._

" _Well, it was due to the military threat that small country and its sealing arts posed that drove shinobi to understand or perish, but it united them. Can you imagine a world where leaders of different villages couldn't speak in the same tongue?"_

Jiraya had recited to Hoshi his thoughts once, and the boy wanted to say yes, not only a world where leaders could not but where different languages were so deeply entrenched they'd fight over dialects even if they were from the same nation.

 _If there's one mother tongue, would it make the derivative languages daughter tongues?_ Hoshi pondered, and for a while he almost felt like he didn't miss a batty, toad-obsessed jounin.

Until he realized what he was thinking of and felt the hollowness inside his chest again. His eyes blurred and his throat tightened, but he kept his painful breathing even.

Instead of practice, the traveller from another dimension drew all night. His little brother grew tired of staring at the hop-in plank of their and soon joined him, saying nothing all night.

Their new leader sharpened the every weapon they had, while the girl keeping him company smoothed out a paper crane, remembering the tale a crafty old sage told her once about making a wish come true by folding ten thousand of them.

Until Hoshi walked back inside, a blank look on his face, Nagato following suite with worry. Ignoring the other occupants of the room, the mentally oldest of them opened the cupboard beneath the sink and took out a scroll none of them had ever seen before.

Spreading it on the table with one fluid stroke (one of the many parlour tricks he acquired, apart from brush-spinning) they discovered its contents were not seals, but some weird Kanji and numbers and some symbols they had never seen before.

"Friends, let me tell you what is in store for Ame." Hoshi announced.

* * *

OMAKE:

Those in the know would come to the conclusion that the Shadow Clone was a Forbidden Jutsu because of the Chakra cost or how not many could handle the influx of memories if they used a clone long enough or made multiple ones.

Qualified researchers and medic-nins would tell you that clones took spiritual energy in the form of one's emotions. An ANBU who did not have the will to go one a spying mission himself would make a clone that sapped enough of his will to go from "I don't want a mission today" to "I don't want to train today" if they were not strictly disciplined. A Hokage who did not want to do paperwork in the first place had nary a chance of making his clone do it, the same way a Jounin too lazy to get out of his bed at dawn could create a clone to make him breakfast while he stayed in bed.

Chakra came back and replenished easily, but minds were harder to heal. Impossible even. Unless one had the willpower to attain their goal at all costs or the strictness to make themselves do what they didn't want to regardless (and some people who worked too hard on keeping every emotion and opinion internal failed at doing so when they formed a clone) the technique acquired a level of danger making it off-limit for all ranks below Jounin. And even they required the consent of the Hokage to peruse the Forbidden Scroll.

But Orochimaru would tell you that the thing which made it forbidden was a client who had offered a good deal of money for an alibi to faked in court, and in order to keep whatever semblance of a judicial system from burning to the ground, the technique was put under Lock and Seal. And what Orochimaru would not tell you was not as important as it was hilarious (to him).

What would you expect if, hypothetically of course, pure speculation, if the technique fell into the hands of a ninja nearing the end of puberty, in all his hormone-addled glory, obsessed with a woman who gave him not the time of the day, but with the ability to perform exact Henge's with a keen eye for detail _and_ the ability to create a clone?

And given the team he was on, the Snake Sannin would rather jump down the throat of a toad then tell anyone that.

* * *

Reviews? Betas? :P


	7. Gravity

And now, this.

* * *

"Is this...what I was so worried about?" Yahiko muttered. "It's not even Fuinjutsu."

"...It's just a normal scroll," Nodded Nagato. "Looks like another language, though not written with Niisan's usual neatness."

Hoshi's eye twitched, not having expected such less-than-stellar reactions.

Konan muffled a giggle behind her hand. Even if she had not disclosed what Hoshi, and sometimes she got up to in the village, Yahiko and Nagato had caught on.

"You guys knew about it?" Hoshi was slightly aware his mouth was open and shut it with a click.

"Well, yeah. There is just one room here," Yahiko waved his hand about the snug hideout. "If it wasn't for Jiraya-sensei, we'd have read it, but he was all for a man having his privacy."

"O...kay," Hoshi drawled. "So, allow me to decode this for you. This symbol here, **A,** is read as _Aa_ , and..."

It took only a little time to elaborate the sounds made by the Latin alphabet, the rest was easy because Hoshi had written what he wanted to using _Romanji_ , instead of actual English.

"Let's see," Nagato cleared his throat, memorizing the alphabet in a flash (whether from his natural brainpower or the Rinnegan, Hoshi knew not). "Raw materials and Food sources available to the Worker, the Educated, the Rich; may be subject to change due to fluctuations. That is one long heading, Niisan."

"And not even an important one, but keep scrolling." Hoshi nodded. The heading was based on gossip alone, because God did people love to talk about sources of income and how much a person made in Ame.

Nagato smiled briefly at the pun, before unfurling the scroll further, showing a map. In the corner was a plus with the letters N, E, S, W clockwise. In the centre of the map, structures were drawn with a lighter touch, labelled as 'Creative Visualization'.

"It's a map of Ame!" Yahiko said at once. "Though why did you draw it? We already know where everything is."

"Well, have you ever seen a map of Ame before?" Hoshi challenged, a small smirk on his face as the other boy realised that no, he had never.

" _He withholds information thinks of himself as your master in his heart,_ is what Jiraya-sensei used to say." Nagato said, not taking his eyes off the map.

Konan coughed into her hand. "Hoshi thinks he can take down Hanzo."

"You what-?!" The other two boys whirled on the boy from another world, looking at him, for all intents and purposes, as if he was not from this earth.

"Hey! Give me a few years!" The white-haired lad held up his hands in placation, which did not soothe his friends at all. After minutes of bickering, Yahiko slammed his hand on the table.

"The hell man, I thought we'd go out and start helping people, not killing people we think should not be in charge!" Yahiko tried come off as angry, but the way he shivered belied his concern.

"Niisan, be reasonable." Nagato would have appeared much calmer, if not for the fact his hair had whipped out of his face and both his eyes were showing. "If we start small and make a relief effort in places people cannot have things or do stuff we can easily acquire with ninjutsu, away from the battles-" _and Hanzo_ "we'll never have to do something stupid like this ever."

"Now now-" Hoshi began but was interrupted swiftly.

"You're stupid, are you Niisan?"

"...It's a ten year plan anyway that begins with relief efforts." Hoshi fired off rapidly.

"He's not denying being stupid." Konan muttered quite audibly and the boy's eye twitched. As if she hadn't planned to deliver his 'hidden' motives in a way to throw him under the bus most efficiently.

"Look here Hoshi," Yahiko started and dictated each point with a finger, "Hanzo is a _S-Rank_ ninja; his security around inner Ame makes sure nothing happens without him knowing it; we'll likely have to be bound to more dangerous places in the village where it will take daily efforts to help people and lastly, there are a lot of people who need a hand."

"I know, I _know_ ," Hoshi glared at Konan. "And so does she that I need at least a decade to bring Hanzo and his allies down."

He didn't really take Konan for a teasing kind, especially after, but judging the day they met, when she had recently become an orphan, any first impression was not worth considering.

"Then let's think about Hanzo a decade from now." Yahiko proposed firmly. "There is much work for us to do. Missions," and a small smile made its way to his face, "our first step on the journey of a hundred million feet."

A gust of wind splattered raindrops against the walls on the outside, providing a beat before the air let up.

"You need to work on your speeches." Konan piped up.

"Shut up! Let's go get breakfast first!"

As they gathered their gear, Yahiko trying to cover his blush, Nagato shooting glances at him from time to time (Hoshi making sure he smiled in return each time), Konan trying to poke more fun at Yahiko, it occurred to him that these would be the only ninjas enthusiastic about tasks that were essentially D-Ranks.

 _One man's garbage is another man's treasure...how people lose sight of what they have for their own sufferings demand attention elsewhere._

Hoshi paused amidst counting his shuriken and flexed his hands, internally marvelling at how his mere thoughts controlled the movement of his fingers. Forget chakra, he would have loved to be just healthy...

"Let's go, young tadpoles." Hoshi spoke, dispersing the atmosphere with nostalgia as he turned his hop-in plank to display 'Out'.

They leapt out together, heading for the village ( _more like city_ , corrected Hoshi internally). The slippery landscape stretched into lines within his vision, and he never forgot marvel at the fact that with his chakra-enhanced speed he outpaced even Usain Bolt.

Brimming with confidence and caution alike, they paused when Ame came into view, before crossing the bridge over a rivulet with only a few leaps. No one wanted Hoshi to ruin the epic moment by falling into the water by crossing directly over it, slim as the chance was.

"So," Yahiko began as they interspersed with the people on the streets in the bazaar they used to frequent years back, "what do you say to paying back what we used to steal?"

"If you can remember it all, and are willing to tell people who we used to be, sure." Hoshi drawled and Yahiko nearly rolled his eyes.

"What do take me for? Of course we won't tell them if they can't remember."

"I wonder if Hana-san remembers us." Konan said with such nonchalance that Hoshi stopped, his chakra flaring alongside his temper and sticking his feet to the ground.

While Hoshi had not revealed anything specific to the other two the day she stalked him a year ago or so, Konan did not refrain from teasing him, a vengeful streak within her that she picked on him more than Yahiko, who the blue-haired girl had come to respect more than him somehow.

"You, biscuit woman!" He hissed, touching a nerve.

Konan's ears turned red. "We agreed to never speak of that!" Her chakra control analogy was something Hoshi would never let her live down, for try as she might, it still caused her embarrassment.

"Who's Hana-san? And what biscuits?" Nagato quipped innocently. As one, two head turned towards him and the redhead raised his hands, a placating smile on his face.

Hoshi's hand shot forward and he clicked Nagato's jaw upward. "I can't be mad with you around."

Konan nodded, as if it was a universal truth. What was it with the Uzumaki and their unnatural cognitive dissonance on others?

"Niisan, stop doing that! It's annoying!"

"Never let your guard down, foolish little brother."

"Again with 'foolish little brother'," A resigned sigh. "You really love using that phrase."

Of course, Hoshi wouldn't ever let Nagato weasel out of that one.

"Right," Yahiko clapped his hands. "See that house?" He pointed towards a brick and cement structure that was leaning forward, incongruent with the perpendicular buildings around it. "Seems like someone got swindled, because I think that was made last year and should be nowhere near that state."

Hoshi inspected it. It was tilted at an acute angle and had two stories, which sent all kinds of warning signs through his head. Mainly, what looked like living quarters weren't meant to follow the lead of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Snapping out of his reverie, he found himself being looked at by three pairs of eyes.

 _For the love of cats, am I an engineer?_ "What?"

"You look like you have a solution." Yahiko declared with a triumphant smile. Sadly, it was not cute like Nagato and Hoshi had to stop himself from punching him for expecting to do something clearly out of his reach.

"I have an idea." He drawled. "But I doubt they'd let us use an earth jutsu in the middle of the population."

"Oh right, we can use an earth jutsu to build supports from the ground itself." Yahiko said and Hoshi snorted. The one who lived in a world surrounded by ninjutsu since birth forgot about it.

"The question is, who is going to go and ask permission?"

"What permission?" Konan asked dryly, seeing Nagato weaving through some handseals and Yahiko whispering in his ears. The sound of the ground rising blocked out the one made by Hoshi's palm as it met his brow.

"Let's get out of here."

* * *

It was quite a while before Hoshi realized that the other three had a cute little conspiracy going on. Sitting around their hideout munching on fish onigiri, the white-haired boy faked a cough.

"Mind telling me why you never let me help anyone?" Black eyes shifted to the Rinnegan, to blue hair, to an excitable face. "We were _clearly_ not going for subtlety."

Konan quirked a brow. "We were trying to protect you."

Something clicked inside Hoshi's head, for he looked at her with sheer surprise. "You told them! You told them about, about-"

"Hanzo, yes," Yahiko spoke, steel in his voice. "Considering whatever your plans will lead us to, we thought it fit to not do things your way if possible."

Hoshi let his palm meet his forehead. "Damn it, what do you think will happen if we just randomly start helping everyone in sight? Next thing you know, anyone who gets help from us gets taught a, a _lesson_ about thinking so little of Hanzo to approach ones who have not shed a single drop of blood for the village and could be trying to divert loyalties for all they know."

Stunned silence, before Nagato broke it with more a croak than a whisper. " _What._ "

"Just assuming we are an organisation, even if there are only four of us, but considering we can use chakra..." Hoshi trailed off. "We'd find ourselves acting as guards of an area of no interest to Hanzo, preferably far away from his influence until we can find more members."

He remembered from the anime, how the original Akatsuki barely amounted to a dozen and a half members, and they didn't arrive until the three orphans were nowhere near central Ame.

But since they were shinobi, chakra-users, Hanzo had brought down the might of his personal forces along with an allied shinobi village to take them down.

And that was when three orphans were trying to be philanthropic in a war-torn world, compared to his own approach of a multi-pronged resistance with roots in the various classes of Ame, so that Hanzo could not afford to take out all of their allies at once, compared to how he had been able to deal with Yahiko's group in the anime.

"You're thinking too much!" Said leader of the current group nervously consoled them, but it did not take a Rinnegan to see the sweat that had broken along his brow.

 _Teenagers, all of them._ Hoshi sighed, before berating himself for thinking low of them.

 _They_ hadn't lived through a Low War before, or plotted each day on how to retaliate against their enemies with the aid of countless knowledge from books and the internet.

"I wish Jiraya-sensei was here." Konan mumbled.

"Niisan, what will we do?" Nagato asked, face grim.

"Why, we simply make such moves _inconvenient_ against us." The boy smirked. "We can simply go out searching for people to help randomly, or..."

* * *

"So, you the guys who fix anything for money?" A haggard man asked, setting down a broken umbrella in front of Hoshi.

"Yes sir!" The white-haired boy grinned. Across the street in a baker shop, Yahiko had taken his last hour's earning, a few hundred Zen, Ame's currency, as payment for food they had stolen about a year ago.

Setting to work on some oddly bent wooden ribs of the umbrella, he took out a bit of thread he had hardened with soap and bits of concrete to tie them securely back into place.

"Hey, is that even gonna hold?" The man leaned into his face, glaring. Tossing a small his thread specifically prepared for such questioning without a pause, Hoshi only flicked his eyes to show he wasn't intimidated.

"Bite through that, and I fix this for free, uncle."

"Sure thing." The man gloated, before proceeding to gnash his teeth and cut the edge of his mouth over the chemically hardened string. "The fuck is this made of?!"

"Trade secret. Here, it's done. One-Fifty zen, uncle." Still gripping the fixed umbrella, Hoshi held out his hand, the message clear. Pay his dues or forget his umbrella.

"Fifty for the special thread, fifty for knowing how to fix it, fifty for doing in under five minutes."

"The last two are the same things. Here's hundred!" Which was what Hoshi had been originally going for, but still made a face to act as if he was being cheated but couldn't help it.

And the man didn't even argue much, like the previous customers who had come with shoes or pots, or simply to get their knives sharpened, and dropped two bronze coins into his palm before reclaiming his item.

Closer to the central district, where Nagato was secretly keeping watch, Konan had set up an origami stand (more of a cardboard mat upon which she sat), selling from paper toads to roses to weird birds Hoshi called 'aero-planes' that came in lots of different shapes, and flew unlike any other origami bird.

' _Seriously,_ ' She thought, as another bunch of boys walked to buy the planes. ' _Where does he come up with these things?_ '

The elaborate ones, Konan had secured with glue so they couldn't be taken apart without being torn. It was common business sense.

And she doubted everyone could fuse papers together, or smooth them out like she could with her chakra to make the bigger ones.

Back in the outer districts, Yahiko returned to Hoshi empty-handed.

"That hag nearly tore me a new one." He huffed to Hoshi, who was sitting with his back to a weathered wall.

"Don't be discouraged."

"Easy for you to say. You didn't even let yourself in her sight." The bigger boy elbowed his friend, tilting his head to see if he could see the bakery from their vantage at all.

Hoshi elbowed him back. "I held her husband in front of a Kunai once, so forgive me." He said dryly.

Yahiko blinked, searched his memories before conceding. "Huh, you're right."

"I always am."

"No, you're on my left."

Hoshi bit down a groan as an old lady walked into their view with a steel tub full of dirty utensils and plates. Yahiko hurried to assist her in putting them down.

"There's quite a lot in here..." Hoshi muttered, struggling to count them without getting his hands dirty.

"Five hundred Zen for them all." The hawk-eyed woman said, as if daring them to deny her wage after she smacked down a box of washing powder.

Hoshi took another look at the dishes. "Obasan, we're young, not dumb. It's not even like five zen per dish. Make it eight hundred and we'll even carry them back for you." Piece of cake if you had chakra.

"I wasn't born yesterday brat. Two zen for each plate, I'm giving you. And twenty for all the spoons and knives. Do I look like I'm made of money?"

"Well, my old man was a healer. Make it eight hundred and I'll even massage those rusty shoulders of yours." Hoshi shot back, wanting more money.

Where Yahiko might have stepped down in sympathy, Hoshi gave no quarter and demanded their salt's worth.

"Ho, I'll think about it after your massage." The lady grinned a crooked grin, to which Hoshi responded by cracking his knuckles while Yahiko gave him a noticeable look, his expression asking multiple questions, before rushing off with a pot from the dirty cutlery to get some water for washing.

In the end, the old lady's arrogance was no match for Hoshi's skill gained from hours of spending time at a physiotherapists' clinic, seeing all the different patients being treated, the ways in which their muscles needed to be handled, or the exercises they needed.

The tough customer had let out more than one satisfactory groan when soothed a captured muscle, or released tension from tired joints.

"You've been working your right side too much," Hoshi observed. "I'd say you carry heavy weights on your head, but you probably don't have anyone to place them there in the first place, if you're lugging them all by yourself. What do you, run an inn?"

"Yea I do." The old lady acknowledged, getting up as Yahiko finished scrubbing the last tin plate clean. "Since you're going to be carrying them for me on the way back, you can see it. You're gonna pay if you want anything."

The old lady took out eight hundred zen, which Hoshi swiftly pocketed. Although the taijutsu specialist had greater physical endurance, it was Yahiko who carried the dishes mainly because he was taller.

They dropped her off after half an hour, and despite her icy old demeanour, a small bowl of spicy fish-bone soup they shared and swore not to tell Nagato or Konan about.

"So, what are we going to do with all the money you're collecting?" Yahiko asked. "I get the whole we need assets and organization, but we are taking capable of taking care of ourselves without money."

Hoshi did not even pause before he answered. "You guys think I'm starting up a charity? We need power."

"We are powerful." Yahiko stepped over a puddle, looking at Hoshi like he was an idiot. The smaller responded with a deadpan.

"We want _prestige_ , to be precise." Hoshi pointed out.

"And we need money for that, of all things?" Yahiko retorted. "This is a poor man's country! Everyone hates the rich, especially those who live in Central. I think people will likes us more if they see us as one of them, than some Central brats."

Reaching their original location back, Hoshi sat down and leaned against a wall. Looking the taller boy dead in the eye, the traveller from another world spoke.

"They will never see me- see us, as one of them and you know it. Don't pretend otherwise." Hoshi snapped his neck sideways. "Don't tell you think we'll be able to make friends of all things, without them wanting to use us."

Perhaps that was a bit harsh on his part, considering how Yahiko seemed to freeze, but it was necessary to say. Their childhoods were forfeit, and so were the innocence they could have expected from friends at their age.

"So? What are we waiting for?" Yahiko grumbled, running his eyes over Konan who was now sitting plain view, no crowded kids around her.

"What are we waiting for?" Hoshi phrased innocently. "Why, trouble of course. We're not going to be friendly helpers, or ninjas who happen to be on the scene with a grim sense of justice."

Yahiko had a wary look on his face, and it was truly deserved. "Please don't say anything idiotic."

Hoshi grinned, not a smidge apologetic. "We're going to pretend to be pretending to be heroes."

A groan was his answer.

* * *

If anyone is confused, feel free to ask questions via reviews. Short chapter again, but I couldn't drag it out. And I hadn't updated in a while so I thought, why not cut it here?


	8. North Star

Trouble nearly did find them, but not in the way that Hoshi had hoped.

For example, it was not caused, directly or indirectly, by the boy himself. It was another girl, in spiky black hair who had undoubtedly stolen a radish and was in pursuit by a rather angry grocer.

Yahiko, bless his heart, had immediately grabbed her hand and led her away, making it as if the thief was their accomplice, causing Hoshi to stop inquiring about the benefits of rice flour versus wheat from a baker and run, even if they could now afford to pay for some bloody vegetables than steal them.

So of course, rather than letting it escalate and to ease the presence of orphans as normal citizens, Hoshi stepped in front of the man and halted him.

"I'll pay for her, so just drop this time, okay uncle?"

"I ain't yer damn uncle and this ain't the first time that bitch be stealin' from me!" If he didn't know how to use chakra the white-haired boy would have been unsure whether he could handle the bald man with the physique of a builder.

But he did and calmly looked at his face, to which Hoshi simply tossed a fifty zen coin at him and bid adieu, knowing that it was worth two radishes at least.

But the man stopped chase and turned around.

Hoshi caught up with Yahiko soon, whacking him upside the head like the good friend he was and turning to the girl they had saved.

"You okay girl?"

"I didn't need your help!" She snapped fiercely, and Hoshi couldn't help but think how cat-like her almond-shaped eyes were.

Of course, Hoshi did not give into the damsel-in-distress stereotype and was going to mention that she owed them for a favour she didn't want, and her resemblance to cats changed his mind almost. Almost.

"Well I paid fifty-zen for the radish you stole so I hope you enjoy it Miss…?" He gestured with his hand for her introduction but she glared back. Eye-twitching, he offered his name first.

"Hoshi."

The girl's glare was foiled by a sneeze, and she quickly wiped her nose. Yahiko sighed.

"Come on, we didn't mean to offend you. Don't think you owe us anything, really!" Yahiko smiled his smile which made people believe things, even if he sucked with words and the girl was placated a bit.

"Well, we'll be on our way. Let's go, Yahiko." And with that Hoshi offered her both of their names in case she ever got into trouble and needed help, because she was a child the same age as Konan and Nagato and he'd be damned if he did nothing while there was something he could do.

They turned and began to walk back to the marketplace, when she spoke. "Asuka."

And when they turned around, she wasn't there. The boys shared a look, shrugged, and carried on. It was time for lunch and their usual meet-up, so they met up at their hideout. Konan and Nagato were already there, sharpening the kunai and shuriken they had scavenged from the areas of known battles.

"Good afternoon." Hoshi greeted, turning his plank to show a familiar toad. Yahiko followed suite and asked what was there to eat.

"Good afternoon Niisan." Nagato replied. He wiped the kunai he held with a rag and set it on the floor amongst the many lined in a neat row. Besides it were shurikens set in a spiral, no doubt Konan's flair.

"There is fish." Konan told Yahiko. The orange-haired boy sighed.

"Not that I'm complaining but it's been fish this past week."

Somehow, Konan had found a cookbook regarding fishes and, now that she could comprehend it, wanted to try everything she could. Nagato wasn't the biggest fan of her cooking, but knew better than to mention Hoshi-niisan cooked better and Hoshi himself indulged her.

"Well, you're free to eat something else." Konan huffed from the kitchen.

"But it's cheaper if you cook it!" Yahiko countered, joining Nagato in weapon maintenance. Hoshi snickered from where he was practicing fuinjutsu on a scroll, trying not to say he was stuck in the presence of a married couple. But it did save money, and they needed every zen they could save, every spare weapon they could find.

Konan must have heard Hoshi, because a knife pierced the squiggly spiral he was practicing. "Hey! What did I say?"

"You were thinking it." Konan retorted. "Nagato, set the table."

Today it was tomato fish stew, chunks of spicy fish floating in a viscous red soup. Hoshi gripped his chopsticks horizontally, the angle insufficient for anyone to jab them lethally into his mouth. The bowl was gripped from the side rather than below so he could let it fall, rather than have hot soup thrown into his face.

 _The things Jiraya-sensei taught us._ Hoshi wondered.

"I wonder if I added the right amount of peppers?" Konan pondered as Nagato set the bowls down as she poured the servings from a pot. Yahiko sniffed it curiously, and then took a bite of the fish.

"Not bad." He said, and then went back to eating.

Hoshi, somewhat a fan of cooking shows in the world behind, had more to say though. "Hm, splendid appearance, although a mint leaf or two on each bowl would make for a nice finishing touch," he intoned and rubbed his chopsticks.

Konan waited patiently as he tasted the dish, smiling wryly at the white-haired boy's antics. He did the weirdest yet nicest things, and one day she would figure out just where he got his outlandish ideas from. Nagato didn't voice his opinion much except the positive points, Yahiko was appreciative but always too hungry to care much, but Hoshi always took her efforts seriously.

"Oooh, spicy. Filleted beautifully, not a single bone in my mouth, so I can chew it without any hesitation, did you use chakra? The texture of the stew sits beautifully on my tongue while I chew, each bite filled with flavour. But the pepper is a bit strong, although perfect according to _my_ tastes." Hoshi finished.

Nagato took a bit and indeed felt the spiciness, reaching for a glass of water. Hoshi sighed, flicking the bottom of the glass and causing more water than the boy had intended to go down his throat. "Foolish little brother, what did I just say? Add a little water to your bowl to dilute the taste."

Nagato nearly pouted, but did as told. "You're mean sometimes."

"Sorry~" Hoshi patted the redhead's noggin, but was not the least bit contrite.

Konan scribbled a note to add less peppers next time in her cookbook. They ate with light hearted chatter, Hoshi joining in rather than just being an observer as he used to be. He was also a lot less patronizing nowadays, Konan noted. Perhaps due to them managing to beat him in training at times.

Then again, Hoshi spent a lot of time studying, and in practicing fuinjutsu so it was natural he was starting to get a little left behind. Apparently he had noticed it too, because after washing the dishes he called for a full on spar with Yahiko.

Nagato meditated, eyes drifting in random directions, observing things beyond the comprehension of everyone he had ever met with his eyes. He would be distracted whenever Hoshi would use chakra, because for some reason he was indistinguishable from untrained civilians until he actually used a jutsu, and ponder about it.

Konan meanwhile tried to practice her aim and channel chakra into her kunai. It was coming along, slowly albeit, but she had made her mind to practice a hundred throws with each hand in ten minutes regardless, with or without chakra.

The girl still kept her situational awareness on the world around her, including Hoshi and Yahiko's spar. No explosive tags were allowed but it was interesting to watch. In terms on ninjutsu Yahiko held an advantage due to his chakra control and nature, but Hoshi was much more agile, especially with his flaming taijutsu style that made him lethal at even medium ranges.

("The flames of youth!" He declared once. The others just sighed, thinking he had picked up the mantle of being crazy in lieu of Jiraya-sensei's absence.)

Yahiko spat a water bullet at Hoshi which he dodged, surging forward with a haymaker that the other boy side-stepped, responding with a kunai to the liver. Hoshi's own was suddenly there to meet his with a _clang_ held in reverse-grip, and by rotating his wrist he pushed Yahiko's away with kick to his chest for good measure.

Yahiko flipped through hand seals as he landed and Hoshi's follow-up punch was blocked by a small pillar of ice-cold water from the ground. Ignoring it, he teleported through it and use the surprise to launch into lightning fast combo, getting a solid hit at Yahiko's ribs and shoulder.

But Yahiko trapped Hoshi's arm and broke into his guard, sucker-punching him, and then driving an elbow through his stomach. The smaller boy spat blood directly onto Yahiko's face ("Dirty!" Konan yelled, still flinging kunai) and struck beneath his chin with his palm, the upper cut lifting the orange-haired boy's toes off the ground.

Gritting through the pain Yahiko chopped Hoshi's neck with his hand, a second after he was socked in his stomach. The two boys fell to the ground in exhaustion, weapons littered everywhere and covered in cuts and bruises beneath their clothes. Noticing the end of the fight, the other two orphans ended their practice ran up to them, Hoshi managing to sit up by himself by the time Konan reached him.

"You don't hold back, do you?" She sighed exasperatedly, examining his face in her hands. She didn't think Yahiko's punch would have leave a permanent mark, but a little ointment would be helpful. Hoshi smiled back at her. "I can't afford to. Yahiko is a tough opponent."

"An eye for an eye, _chibi_." Yahiko retorted, dusting himself. Hoshi twitched at the nickname.

"Well, I'm the one who has to fix you up." Konan shook her head. "What will I do with you boys?"

"You don't nag at Yahiko half as much." Hoshi said wryly as she pulled away and lifted himself up by her proffered hand.

"Don't change the subject." Konan hissed. Hoshi winked at her and succeeded in getting a flustered expression.

"You know what I need?" Yahiko said, cracking his back and sighing deeply. "A sword."

"Hm, sounds like a good idea. I could use one myself." Hoshi flexed his bandaged fingers. While he incorporated shurikenjutsu to some extent in his style, he didn't have the accuracy to make it a big part of his repertoire. Kenjutsu, though, might fit right up his alley.

"It can also help to extend your short reach." Konan remarked offhandedly, and Hoshi elbowed her stomach. The white-haired boy was a few inches shorter than her, to say nothing of the other two boys.

"I'm not short! It's you who is needlessly tall." Hoshi pouted moodily, sticking his hand in the pockets of the shinobi pants he wore underneath his yukata.

"Yahiko, did you hear something?" Konan turned to their leader, who was trying to stifle his laughter.

"No," he said, shoulders shaking. "Did you?"

"It seems to be coming from near the ground." Konan carried out while Hoshi fumed, stomping off ahead of them. Nagato's mouth twitched into a smile while Yahiko laughed outright now.

"Gits, the lot of them." Hoshi muttered to his self. First they ran willy-nilly, helping people with ninjutsu and now this. Well, it didn't get any worse than that.

"So I was wondering," Yahiko began as they entered their cabin. "We should all get the Ame headbands. We can defend ourselves now, even against strong opponents if we stick together. How about it?"

Hoshi looked at him like he had grown a second head. "And, pray tell, what do you think a forehead protector symbolises?"

He had an inkling of what Yahiko meant, though.

"Well, we have to open up people to the idea that shinobi can be _kind._ Isn't that right, Konan?"

Konan snorted, "You're only kind to pretty ladies."

"You know what I mean!" Yahiko spoke through gritted teeth. "We need to become players in the game on a wider scale. Sure, we are not going to war this time, but we need a better system, one that actually uplifts the shinobi of Ame rather than remind everyone of Hanzo's shadow whenever they see an Ame headband."

Hoshi bit back his response at Yahiko's weirdly mature words. A system of warring nations thrived off patriotism and Rain was no exception, as Jiraya had once told them. What Yahiko wanted was to wear a headband, as if it would make him a player on the world stage.

While information about Hanzo was scarce, definitely on purpose, so were the faces and names of the shinobi under him. It was a small village with no other ninja with a wide claim to fame as was of the shinobi of other villages other than the Kage.

There was just the leader, the Salamander Summoner.

Suna's Puppeteers. Kiri's Swordsmen. Konoha's Sannin. Kumo's Dual Units, Iwa's

What _did_ Ame have to compete against the inhuman multitasking puppetry of Sasori of the Red Sands, the adroitness of the White Fang, the titanic mist swordsman Fuguki Suikazan, the Kumo Jinchuuriki with unheard mastery of his Bijuu, and Iwa's Explosion Release squad, not to mention the bloodline limits possessed by the various clans that inhabited these villages?

Hoshi did _not_ want to wear a shinobi headband at all, especially an Ame one. He did not want to step into battles with shinobi of developed villages if he could help it, even with Nagato's Rinnegan.

In all honesty, the orphans hadn't been inside any of the posh cantonments of the Ame village. There was wealth, but it was unequally distributed. The village's military was its most functional institution and provided security for middle-class and above settlements at all times while shinobi randomly patrolled the other, remaining areas.

There was a civilian Council which Hoshi had learned about, which was to help the shinobi collect taxes and also discuss proposals for facilities and other issues that cropped up. The problem with that was everything had to pass through the village leader, and the council was composed of mostly reach, central residents of Hidden Rain.

So really, Hoshi had let his own bias from the anime influence him. People did oppose Hanzo, yes, but they held a greater contempt for the Council, the way politicians were derided as nothing but no-good thieves in his old world, misusing public money.

And the educated population of the wealthier districts were not fond of Hanzo, or rather what the mysterious figure represented. That a shinobi would always be at the top of the chain, ruling the village. That the civilians, the greater part of the population, wouldn't be let into the fold of policy-making.

Policies which were currently focused more on innovating technology for the benefit of the few by the many, and preventing the outside world from getting such technology.

 _When Jiraya-sensei had said Ame lacked sealing experts, he forgot to mention that instead we have damn good engineers._

"-shi, HOSHI!" Yahiko's punch was absent-mindedly deflected by Hoshi, but it did gain his attention.

"How about we be sneaky and hide the fact that we use chakra like we are currently doing, helping the old, and the needy like we used to be?" Hoshi answered.

"Man, we need to get more people to join us. More shinobi." Yahiko added. "Can't do that by just performing random charity. We know ninjutsu, for the Sage's sake!"

"I do believe Niisan is engaging in what Jiraya-sensei called Low War," Nagato said dryly. The other two besides Hoshi looked at him. "Keeping our heads down and not drawing the attention of the enemy while we handle him."

"And if any shinobi who pillage the houses at night within the village were to be confronted by us without wearing the headband, we would garner unnecessary attention," Konan spoke softly. "But, imagine for a moment, that instead we only wear the headbands while confronting foreign shinobi? I've information of three houses which were looted by enemies, and two of them are now…unoccupied." She trailed off, but they got the meaning.

Hoshi looked grim, albeit convinced. "I think that can work." From the anime, what he recalled was the trio wearing around headbands during the day. But at night, when the broken areas were less than protected should anyone sneak past the borders?

They had the power to stop it. He had the power to stop it. And he would make it count. _But for now…_ Hoshi whipped out a scroll and in one single flourish, which he may or may not have practiced extensively, unfurled so it covering the length of the table, stopping just before its edge.

"Who's up for learning another language?" Hoshi grinned. The Korean alphabet was the most logical and easiest one to teach, and the grammar much simpler than any other language he knew, like English.

"For secure communications. Jiraya-sensei didn't teach us about making codes or anything, but if we use another language as a base, we can get something reasonably secure." Konan deduced at once, and Hoshi titled his head to her.

"Got it in one, Konan. Let's start at once, and get those damn headbands tomorrow."

"You really are a foreigner aren't you?" Yahiko said dryly. He couldn't care less though. Hoshi was Hoshi, the eccentric short boy with too many ideas to spread.

" _Of course I am._ " Hoshi replied in Korean. Three pairs of eyes blinked. "Well, let's get started then." He switched back to Japanese.

* * *

Nagato's Rinnegan Log:

 _Written upon Hoshi-niisan's insistence to record what I can observe with my eyes._

 _Things I cannot do:_

 _Anticipate or predict taijutsu or ninjutsu_

 _Copy and replicate taijutsu or ninjutsu instinctually – I believe that relies more upon my intelligence_

 _See all around me and through solid objects_

 _See chakra networks within a body_

 _Things I can do:_

 _See well beyond the range of others, up to several thousand meters. Hoshi-niisan wants me to hunt birds someday._

 _Observe in great detail, enough magnification to count grains of rice in my bowl._

 _Clarity in darkness, takes no time to become accustomed to the darkness like others._

 _As far as the eyes go. Other things which Jiraya-sensei attributed to the Rinnegan was the fact that I face no difficulties with elemental affinities, including yin and yang chakra..._

* * *

Elsewhere in Konoha, a weary Hokage stamped the final set of papers needed. And would not be needed for a long time after this particular event, as the war-time divisions were on the cusp of becoming active in a few weeks.

Hiruzen eyed the list of participating genin, coming to stop at one particular prodigy. The son of the late White Fang, Hatake Kakashi. What kind of showing would he do, now that his father was no longer there to fight for Konoha? Showing no hints of the exhaustion he felt, the god of Shinobi lit his pipe, and inhaled deeply.

Let the chunin exams begin.

* * *

Liked it? Hated it? Review! An update after a long time, but considering my other crappy SI fic is getting more attention, you can judge my priorities xD but also, sorry for the short Konoha side. No Sannin scene. Just an indication of what's going on.


	9. Orion

Therre was no announcement. No declaration. Not any huge skirmish.

All there was the morning sun, piercing the cloud with rays of pink, violet, its golden rays illuminating a still barracks near the north-western borders of the Land of Fire.

The corpses of two jounin and six chunin lay motionless as sunlight crept upon them, wind ruffling the long grass which grew alongside Grass Country's borders.

The morning hawk flew back without a check-in from the stationed commander, and then Konoha knew.

The Third Shinobi War had begun.

"And it was such a fine day, perfect for writing." Jiraya lamented. He had travelled far and wide, and would explore further unchartered lands still, but autumn in Konoha was a marvel like no other.

The gold, orange and yellow leaves cluttered the streets as clouds drifted slowly, promising rains which would cool the land and usher in winter. The green hills surrounding the blue Naka river flowing through the village and its subsequent tributaries became heavenly picnic spots amidst the decreasing heat.

The Uchiha would paint their shrines anew in red and white, keeping their compound streets obsessively clean of leaves in a way no other clan, except perhaps the Hyuga, cared about. During fall would also be when their rival Dojutsu clan would brand seals to the branch family children. Not a bright thought, though Jiraya might make a pun about the fall of branch family coming around during fall.

Not that it would dislodge whatever golden stick was up their traditional asses.

Of the Inuzuka, there was a certain breed of theirs which went into heat only during this time of the year, once a year. Jiraya did not bother to learn exactly what, for a secret not known was a secret best kept. Same for the Aburame, who held some sort of ritual during this season, restricted to the clan members except the Hokage and his chief of staff for obvious reasons.

The Nara would cut down some trees to allow sunlight to filter through Nara Clan Forest, thinning as they called it, while some selected individuals, regardless of rank or civilian status may be given the privilege to visit the forest, as Jiraya knew Orochimaru had been years back for internships with the pharmaceutical branch for a month, enhancing their chances to get into Konoha's Research and Development Institute.

The Toad Sage had heard about the up and coming Yamanaka clan head, Inoichi, opening up a flower shop alongside his wife. And their clan symbol was a bush clover which bloomed only in Autumn, signifying "positive love".

The Akimichi would also begin ordering fish imports, and those delicacies the Sannin would also have to forgo, considering he'd be anywhere but in Konoha at the time in winter. Jiraya sighed, huge shoulders hunching. "Fate is cruel, is it not?"

And yet, amongst all this musing, about the scenery and food and development which captivated the Sage.

No, it was hope. Hope that spring was on its no matter how far.

The leaves fallen would nourish the roots and give sustenance to the tree, allowing it to weather the cold and the snow, paving the way for a new growth, the next generation. Much in the same way as a Shinobi of Konoha.

"Maybe I do have too many tree-related analogies..." Jiraya murmured to himself, the notebook in front of him abandoned quite some time before. He sensed the ANBU as he or she entered into his range, waited a couple of seconds for them to make their presence known with a rustle of feet.

"Tiger! Long time no see!" Jiraya announced without even looking and then turned around, striking a totally awesome pose. The ANBU was so struck by its magnificence that he was stilled. The Sannin laughed boisterously, folding his arms. "Sure you didn't think you'd get by the great Jiraya, Sage of Mount Myoboku! did you?"

"Jiraya-sama, it's time." The flat tone made Jiraya glad he'd never signed up to be an ANBU. No class, no flair.

He sighed dramatically. "Okay, okay, Imma coming." With a stealth and speed that belied his huge size – he had more than one foot on the ANBU agent, he noted, - the Sannin made his way to the Hokage office, sprinted up its side without anyone being the wiser and somersaulted towards the window behind the desk.

"The Great Jiraya has-" _Arrived._ He finished mentally, having smacked into the crystal clear glass window, sliding down with his face and hands squeaking against it. Sarutobi Hiruzen watched his student, nonplussed, before turning around as it there wasn't a six-foot tall shinobi pressed on the window behind him.

His other students walked into his office at that moment, catching sight of their teammate, before turning to each other as if to say 'Not _my_ problem.'

"Oi, Sensei! SENSEI! OPEN THIS WINDOW!"

"Tsunade," The Sandaime stated in lieu of an answer and the blonde marched forward, vein throbbing on her forehead as she pushed the window open. There was a slight problem though; she had swung it outwards, smacking her teammate off the building.

Sarutobi's eye twitched as a dramatic wail followed.

Orochimaru moved without prompting and stuck his arm out, a brown boa constrictor appearing out of his sleeve, longer than it had any right to be. It caught his idiot of a teammate, before pulling up and depositing him on the office floor. The snake gave one last squeeze, as if relaying its master's irritation, before disappearing back up his sleeve.

"Children," Sandaime intoned before any of them broke out bickering. In a flash the three stood in front of him, as if the last few minutes had never happened, faces sober. "It has begun."

Hiruzen gestured towards the map on his desk. With a one-handed seal various thumb-tacks were revealed on it. "Somewhere between 0100 to 0300, the outposts NW15, NW18 have been destroyed, as well as SW1 and SW2, designated red. Various others were skirmished and harassed at various times, designated yellow. NW24 only remained intact due to your intel, Jiraya." North-West and South-West posts.

They knew it was coming, but even still Jiraya felt a lead weight in his stomach. Looking at the pins, he blinked. Three countries acted as a buffer between the Land of Fire and the Land of Stone, Rain to the left, Grass in the middle, and finally Waterfall to the right. In the West was The Land of Wind.

Just then a chunin burst in, juggling half a dozen scrolls. "Reports from the borders, Hokage-sama!"

"Orochimaru, Tsunade, your orders." The old man tossed two of the crimson scrolls from his desk to his students, both of which vanished at once. "Jiraya, help me with those reports. You, good work. Dismissed." The chunin bowed and left.

Jiraya pulled up a seat and began going through the freshly arrived scrolls with his teacher, mind whirring with the facts.

The Fence-Sitter was a wily old coot, but he couldn't have allied and coordinated a strike that covered left-hand side of Konoha, especially with the villages in between. According to his sources small battles and scuffles were breaking out with the smaller villages, escalating with time but none of those who had shown any friendliness towards the Five Great Nations.

Hanzo wanted out of this war, but the Sannin had reports that he was focused more on building a Hidden Village than a proper country. Rain had only four provinces, all with their own Daimyo. And all of them were under the Salamander Summoner's thumb. And so he had suspected that he would give Iwa passage to Konoha, for mineral trades such as marble and gypsum.

Grass was not a big surprise, but what was surprising was that the reports stated it was Kusa-nin themselves who attacked the outpost, some of their notable elite, referenced in the Bingo Book. The only one who had survived from there, NW18, and had written the report was Uchiha Naori.

"Chunin?" Jiraya muttered to himself, reading the details of the battle. Had eliminated two B-Rank enemies, escaped from an A-Rank one, and...

 _Unable to save any comrade. Destroyed all documents with oil and Fireball combination before retreating._

She was nineteen years old. Impressive for a chunin.

What was bothersome was Waterfall. Their _own_ shinobi had raided the outpost NW15. They had the Seven-Tails, and he had sources saying it was leading the Daimyo, Mizuki, to have a jingoistic rhetoric. Even if they didn't know how to use it, it's mere presence was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

They couldn't face that outright.

"Sensei, about Takigakure-"

"Orochimaru."

"The Daimyo or their Jinchuuriki?"

"Both if he can manage it. We need that buffer against lightning."

Jiraya betrayed no emotion on his face. Relieved that he didn't have to be the one to assassinate a leader behind enemy lines and then escape, and sick that it had to be done in the first place. Tsunade was no doubt going to be needed against Suna, along with the platoon of their poison specialists. Their Puppet Corps had come up with some fucked up poisons in the last war only she could treat.

"I'll head towards Grass, and then Rain." Jiraya wrapped up the last of scrolls and stood. The weary Hokage tossed him crimson scroll, his objectives.

"In a week they should rendezvous with you at the marked location."

"Roger, Sensei. Oh, and I give my recommendation for Uchiha Naori to be promoted to jounin." Jiraya added. "Well, you know, places to be, people to meet, yada yada. See you, Sensei."

"Careful Jiraya, and good luck."

"Luck? The Sage of Mount-"

"Get out of my office." Hiruzen cut across his student's theatrics and lit his pipe.

Jiraya grinned, striking a pose, his hands pulling an imaginary bow taught. "Aha, _your_ office, never mine! Enjoy yourself sensei!" He pulled down his eyes and blew a raspberry, disappearing in a puff of smoke.

Seconds later the Sannin could be heard sprinting down the sides of the tower.

The Sandaime reclined in his chair, cracking a small smile at the display. And the fact that paperwork had been low for him, since he'd restarted his training a month ago. You didn't let your best weapon lie and gather rust after all, admittedly a very old weapon.

* * *

Hoshi should not have expected a neutral country to _be_ actually neutral. Neutral meant letting Iwagakure use your routes to invade into Konoha, in return for imports and access to their mineral reserves.

After settling their debts in the main village, they had followed Yahiko's and moved out from the village. Drifting away from the main land occupied by Amegakure, down the streams of the great river whose name Hoshi didn't know but just called it 'Fiver' due to the number of tributaries it had, were other small villages. They were small settlements with barely around fifty or so people to a population, and made the around two thousand people in the main village seem gigantic.

"Outside of this place are plenty of smaller villages that need our help and protection. I know of one, and its high time we go somewhere we can operate in the open." Yahiko had said.

"What's your long term plan?" Hoshi asked then, wondering as they ran along a river together.

"We'll work hard as hell and show people that poverty and pretty promises are not the destiny of this eternally weeping nation," Yahiko intoned. "We'll make them aware that lives led in continuously in fear are not worth living. We already have a small reputation as a handy bunch of kids during the day, and I've noticed quite a few rumors spread after we started our nightly operations. People are gaining _hope_ , Hoshi. As much it grates my nerves though, they think of us as shinobi under Hanzo. And since it's beneficial to his reputation, I doubt we'd be removed.

"What we need is combat experience. We can gain that more easily by staying in another smaller village not very far from here. They experience a higher ratio of raids and attacks, from our own as well as foreign shinobi. Once we have enough power to level the playing field, alongside numbers, we can set up a negotiation with Hanzo."

"You're actually thinking about him?" Hoshi had paused.

"Well, you spend day and night worrying about how to rule Ame, how can I not?" Yahiko deadpanned. "Besides, I'm going to start assigning you missions from now on. That way you can't complain, much anyway."

Hoshi had smirked, and simply accepted the conditions. Yahiko's style was to lead from the front, and eventually he'd have to get used to idea of sending people forward on their own to complete objectives they might fail, or lose their lives trying to accomplish.

"Well, there's a war on the horizon. Why are you changing your mind now?" It was an old argument, Hoshi trying to run their small group like a tactical unit whereas Yahiko trying to pass them all off as his friends. Though he tried to lead them, he was young and would prefer to responsibilities be shared rather than clearly defined as the white-haired boy wanted.

Now though, it seemed that had changed.

"Gathering information about it is your first mission. We need to know what's happening with the rumors going around that we've allied with Iwa, we've allied with Kusa, that Konoha is going to help us with aid if we attack Iwa ourselves. I'll take the other two to the village I talked about. It's been marked on the map." The taller boy tossed a slim scroll to his friend, who unrolled their self-made map and glanced at it, memorizing the co-ordinates.

"Got it. Time limit? Any certain objectives?" Hoshi asked, counting the scrolls in the pouch strapped above his hips. All were accounted for.

"Konan got wind of some 'allies' coming along from the western side of the country, hearing the complaints from some merchants in Central about how a foreigner had hitched a ride with them to meet Hanzo and couldn't be persuaded to leave. You have three- no, five days. Konan also finished cooking those ration bars."

Hoshi blinked at that, before smirking. "She did? You're gonna be one lucky man someday."

"O-oi! What do you mean?!"

And Hoshi had not answered, instead getting a pack of self-made ration bars. Crushed white oats, mixed with powdered eggshells and plenty of sugar. Konan boiled water with gelatin, before adding the solid mixture to it. When it cooled off, it formed a solid, chewy mix that was packed with thousands of calories.

The less said about the taste the better. Hoshi grinned at her accomplishment, before sealing ten bars for his mission. Two a day would be enough, with a size of five by three inches and one-inch thick (Konan had measured).

"If not, you can have the feedback to improve their proportions. Good luck Hoshi-jiji." She had smiled, blinking innocently.

"Ha ha, you're so funny." Hoshi clipped.

And then she handed him her spyglass she'd stolen from God-knows-where, telling him to not get a scratch on it. Considering it had a hydrophobic lens, Hoshi was bound to agree.

Exchanging good boys and reaching up to pat Nagato's head, he gave them a thumbs up. "By your leave, Yahiko-taicho."

"Tch. Stay safe." Yahiko grumbled. Hoshi nodded as a fork came up the river.

He'd split off from them then and there, knowing that the target would be Konoha and factoring in the multiple routes that led into it. Since his task was finding shinobi, that meant the difficulty of passage was irrelevant, they'd pick the most efficient path. That meant heading east and camping there, setting up his own patrol while dodging the Rain patrols.

Grey fatigues helped camouflage him against the slate hills where nothing grew and he wore an Ame headband. His chakra was undetectable, except to Nagato, but Hoshi doubted any other shinobi could come as close as the possible-Uzumaki in his sensory abilities. He had also donned a wig of light brown hair. It was made from real hair, bought off a woman by paying her with much needed food at a discount, and then Konan had done her magic with crafts as she did and viola. With a breather masking most of his face, Hoshi was set.

Hoshi's own sensing allowed him range, meaning he picked up shinobi presences but couldn't deduce their levels or, like Nagato could, their primary elemental affinities. So while that meant he could camp just a mile away from Ame ninjas, close enough to make out their snorkel-like face-gear, he wouldn't be able to tell if they were foreigners or their skill.

He hours in the rain, dodging and hiding in caves when he could, lying flat on the cold ground to disappear blend in with his clothes, one time even jumping into a river and clinging to the edge of the bank with chakra. It took around three minutes for the enemy ninja to cross past him, and another two for them to reach a safe distance away from him.

It was like being behind enemy lines, this being his own country.

On his fourth night, he finally, _finally_ achieved something.

Hoshi slowed, and then halted, sensing a whole platoon at the end of his range. _Definitely more than ten._ The boy took out his borrowed spyglass and began to observe when they came into view, communicating with hand-sings that were not used by Hanzo's soldiers. He'd know, he and Konan had prowled the nights and hid from their own share of ANBU to spy on their language.

His pulse quickened as the group stopped for a breather. _Gotcha._

Iwa nin were sneaky, capitalizing on the distinct outfits of Ame ninjas. Just like he was blending into the surroundings, they were blending into the shinobi by copying their uniforms. Fifteen shinobi. Faces in indistinguishable but four females he could clearly spot due to the body-fitting wetsuits of Rain they were wearing.

More than a few seemed to be seething at the rain. Heh. Hoshi knew that feel. One day he'd try to understand just how high were their underground water levels.

Shifting his spyglass and mentally referencing the map, Hoshi deduced that they could get into Konoha in a day or two if they travelled non-stop. And with technically being granted cover by Rain, they could stop for rest before launching whatever plans they had. They were much too far from Amegakure, and were much more concerned with Konoha than Kusa, if he recalled the manga.

And then two of them turned his way directly, both of them tall and well-built. Enough to be jounin. The clouds were lighter, meaning his spyglass must have flashed in the lifting dawn. Cursing, he retreated.

"Stop there!" He stood directly in front of him although the voice came from behind. Coal-black eyes narrowed at the genjutsu. Hoshi turned around at once, and made a show of pretending to be confused. The chakra signature behind him inched closed as the voice continued. "What are you doing here? Identify yourself!"

"A-a-ah, sorry! I'm Otonashi, a genin." Hoshi bowed, coiling his muscles. There didn't seem to be anyone else around. _Shit. This guy is definitely a jounin. Come on, walk closer._

"And why the fuck is a genin here? You lost?"

"Ah y-yes," Hoshi blabbed on. "My squad didn't like me much, and it was dark last night when they moved. I had the last watch but when I woke up everyone was gone."

"Tch." The man was just an arm's length behind him, his voice equidistant from the front. "Alright, give me your ID number, and I'll point you to the nearest check-post."

 _Well, shit._

"O-oh, it's-" He fumbled the sleeves of his black yukata, knowing the enemy couldn't had loosened his guard a bit. Within his roomy sleeves was a storage seal he had drawn himself. A small pulse released the unsheathed blade and the boy whirled quick as lightning, swinging his sword with a step so fast it could have been a body-flicker.

The ninja behind him was dressed a sleeveless black body suit, with dark grey vest and matching bracers for arms and legs. His green eyes were shocked behind his grimy black bangs, a slash on his neck. Blood gurgled in his throat, leaking through his grill of his oval mouthpiece.

He was surprisingly young, and had a delivery bag on his person. A courier chunin.

"H-How...no killing intent at all..." He slumped to the ground, blood pooling around him. He continued to mumble, but Hoshi was moving, shoving the tip of his sword into the top of his spine. He went limp, stopping all twitching.

Hoshi took it as a sign that he'd struck true and severed all his nerves, sparing him the pain. Next he turned to the bag, recognizing the lock as one he could pick. It was made of waterproof canvas cloth, sturdy but highly flammable.

Hoshi felt the two of the disguised Iwa shinobi reaching his location and hurriedly slung the bag over his own back. Both were male, features hidden as Hoshi's own due to the uniform.

"I was wondering why one of the signatures disappeared." One of the Iwa ninja remarked, voice rugged. It had a slight accent that did not fit this country.

"Sir, he tried to kill me. Can't have his falling into anyone's hand." Hoshi patted the bag he was wearing. "Don't know why the dumb shit tried. This thing is locked and secure. Only my captain can open it...er, jounin-sama?"

The other shinobi shrugged, deciding that he wasn't worth any delay and regrouped with their own men (and women), carrying onwards. Taking the bag with him, Hoshi ran to a small cave some two kilometers away, and then decided to pick the lock.

He had only a second's warning before he heard a fuse, and used a substitution as the thing exploded.

"Damn it!" Hoshi hurriedly spat a water bullet it but it continued to burn. "Shit, water-proof material can be _highly_ flammable." He rushed forward and stuck his hands inside, ignoring the burns and tossing whatever he found away from the flames.

Burnt and useless ration bars, brand new kunai and shuriken albeit sooty, two blackened and flaking scrolls, which were obviously the target, a precious soldier pill bottle that he'd accidentally smashed when he threw it, and... an updated Bingo book.

Hoshi opened his storage scroll meant for his rations that were now down to just two, and filled the remaining space with as much new weapons as he could. He formed a neat tower of kunai in a square formation, piling the shuriken inside. Then he placed the black, hardcover Bingo book on it and sealed before it could fall.

As long as something fit the surface of the scroll and was up to one foot-tall, it could be sealed successfully without any harm. Hoshi had designed them to accommodate a height of fifteen inches, but kept the last three inches as a safety measure.

The seal inside his sleeve could hold many things, but was meant only for his sword. That one-hit kill movement had been practiced thousands of time for critical moments.

Now here he was, stuck in the basement of a warehouse used to store sacks of sand. A cement factory, in essence. Not as tightly guarded as grain silos or maintained as much as poultries, but secure. There was a bonus with it being uncanny enough that no one would expect a potential rebel to rest in there. Sneaking into a house for cover didn't sit well with him.

His hands were covered in a healing salve and bandages. He'd been quite reckless when retrieving things from fire. Sighing, he took a sip of water from his canteen, pondering over his life.

Two years since Jiraya had left, and the Third Shinobi World War had started. In a way, it came later than Hoshi expected, but all too soon.

Due to the onset of the war, the four orphans had taken to providing protection for these smaller villages as per the plan. Yahiko sucked at speeches, but radiated a charisma that eased people. Konan had taken her origami to a whole new level, and Nagato was beginning to learn fire, his last element.

Hoshi himself had obtained a katana, courtesy of Hana from the Red Lotus Inn. The woman had a history of being an apprentice to a healer, before she was sold by her parents to a 'client'. The act was horrific, but Hoshi had learned that man, kept anonymous by Hana, for all his faults was gentlemen and kept her as...well, whatever the heterosexual word for pederasty.

Hoshi cynically boiled it down the man being handsome enough for his auction of freedom to be tolerable. But that was just him and he didn't speak shite about it. The woman he had wanted access to, the "Aunty" passed away due to giving birth, but she had brought a baby boy into the world. The title of Aunty was now held by "Hana-nee" and Hoshi, who had been somewhat of a regular helper there requested and got a sword. A plain one, but it was sharp.

There was also the time he had landed all his friends into learning a dance the prostitutes did, some sort of bastardization of the Land of Fire's Geisha culture, but it required lots of flexibility and gave them ideas for new taijutsu forms.

All refused to forgive him, even Nagato got mad at him.

"Ah, good times." He whispered to himself, taking another sip from his canteen. The boy he had killed today wasn't his first, and it wouldn't be his last. Hoshi hugged his knees, wishing someone was here with him. He wanted Yahiko to give him some reassurance, Nagato to fuss over him, or Konan to try and annoy him, starting a petty fight. He wanted to feel Jiraya-sensei's large hand on his hand, telling him about the way the world was and just being there.

He hiccuped, clenching his fists. Took deep breaths, shuddering. And then reopened his eyes with a steeled heart. Whether in this world or the one before, he had hated death, no matter whose it was. He was a murderer, he would not lie to himself.

Hoshi operated was no stranger to operating alone, but he did not like being lonely. Loneliness meant he'd think of his life before, how he'd died, how he could have chosen countless different paths, then denying that he couldn't, and life wasn't fair. He'd taught the orphans Korean, called Nagato his little brother and meant it from his heart (even though the idiot was taller than him and had a deeper voice, baritone opposed his tenor), but he had not told them _who_ he was.

It stabbed his heart, making breathing difficult at times. But then, neither of the other orphans had shared their own backgrounds. Did they feel like he did? With another sigh, he got up. It was time to meet his team again.


End file.
